The Angel of History [Paperback]

Carolyn Forche (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 1995

Placed in the context of twentieth-century moral disaster--war, genocide, the Holocaust, the atomic bomb--Forche's ambitions and compelling third collection of poems is a meditation of memory, specifically how memory survives the unimaginable. The poems reflect the effects of such experience: the lines, and often the images within them, are fragmented discordant. But read together, these lines, become a haunting mosaic of grief, evoking the necessary accommodations human beings make to survive what is unsurvivable. As poets have always done, Forche attempts to gibe voice to the unutterable, using language to keep memory alive, relive history, and link the past with the future.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Though Forche's ( The Country Between Us ) previous books have been groundbreaking works of political and moral depth, this new volume may be the most remarkable. Ambitious and authentic, The Angel of History is an overarching book-length poem, composed in numbered sections, that invokes the horror of contemporary times in a mode reminiscent of Eliot's "The Waste Land." Much as Eliot's poem refracted WW I, the vacuity of culture and the fragmentation of modern life, Forche considers the Holocaust, Hiroshima and genocide in Latin America--the dismal past that predicates the chaotic present. Her vehicle is the Angel of History, who confronts human cruelty and misery but can do no more than record them, as explained by Walter Benjamin in an epigraph: "The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But . . . the storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward." Though the poetry is powerful, it is not always easily understandable; one must follow the Angel through serpentine lines, a disjointed and oblique nightmare whispered by an indeterminate narrator, and a splintered pastiche that borrows apocalyptic phrases from Elie Wiesel, Kafka, Canetti, Trakl, Char and Valery. But the journey ventured is well worth the occasional wrong turn: Forche has not only created poetry of consummate beauty, but has borne witness to the wounds of our collective history, fulfilling the conviction that "surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"A dark, richly textured, complicated work...[The Angel of History] is that great rarity, an altogether new thing." -- Liz Rosenberg, Boston Globe

"I don't think I have ever come across a poem of such length that is nevertheless so beautifully transparent and haunting." -- James Merrill

"Poetry of consummate beauty...reminiscent of Eliot's "The Waste Land." -- Publishers Weekly

"Poetry of consummate beauty...reminiscent of Eliot's 'The Waste Land.'" -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The Angel of History is instantly recognizable as a great book, the most humanitarian and aesthetically 'inevitable' response to a half century of atrocities that has yet been written in English." -- Calvin Bedient, The Threepenny Review

"The poignant cri de couer of this singular work most affect all who have an integrity still possible in this painfully despairing time." -- Robert Creeley

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (February 3, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060925841
• ISBN-13: 978-0060925840
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #225,069 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brutal and Brainy--maybe the best poetry of the decade., February 9, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Galesburg, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Angel of History (Paperback)

This book demands all the mental stamina, literacy, and spiritual powers of endurance, that a reader can offer. The images and fragmented narratives resonate immediately, but there is enough to keep you re-reading, finding new connections, for years. The century's worst atrocities: Hiroshima, the Holocaust, World Wars, are right next to the century's highest intellectual achievements: Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Walter Benjamin. If you get the references, if you understand the history--or even if you don't (Forche is that good)--The Angel of History will be transformative reading.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a genius, September 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Angel of History (Paperback)

This book is the work of a genius which demands to be read and reread time and again. A heir to the tradition of Anna Akhmatova, Paul Celan and Edmond Jabes, Carolyn Forche is able to create a work that once read will never be forgotten. This is not just the major book -- this is the very best. If the Lord Almighty lives in our prayers, this poetry is precisely his own, clear speech. It is a crime not to read this book.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars almost cruelly intelligent modern poetry, May 23, 2002

By 

"hirofantv" (tomorrow) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Angel of History (Paperback)

This book is just so brilliant. The poems are all terseness, & their lyric integrity & elliptical masonry demand very close attention of the reader. This is avant-garde poetry written by the fists of genius.