The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems [Paperback]

Jay Parini (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2005

An acclaimed American poet, Jay Parini is widely recognized for his ability to confront modern issues in a variety of forms, while adding a highly musical sense of phrasing and a relentless sense of humor. Parini, as seen in his previous works of poetry—Anthracite Country (1982), Town Life (1988), and House of Days (1998)—has created a remarkable voice of his own. The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems is a testament to Parini's unique poetic style and constantly evolving vision.

A compilation of fifty-nine new poems and forty-three from previous collections, The Art of Subtraction demonstrates Parini's wide range of poetic registers. One sequence of poems responds to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Others deal with personal themes and continue Parini's ongoing exploration of the relationship between language and mind. The poems drawn from previous collections have been carefully chosen to represent the breadth of his work and of his experience as an American poet over the course of his career.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Parini's new poems, which constitute most of this flinty and satisfying collection, are edgy, angry, and satirical, cleansing in their ire, cathartic in their dark humor. Taut and unsettling, these works reflect the mental state of siege engendered by September 11 and the war in Iraq, manifest as pervasive feelings of helplessness, insignificance, and skepticism, the out-of-kilter sensation of nightmares brought to waking life. The poet, terse and to the point, addresses the reader directly in simple and familiar words that form poems as finely balanced and earthy as stacked stone walls. Parini writes with imagination and verisimilitude about nature, but he is most concerned with the doings of humankind, war and politics, our towers and power stations, the enormity of our lies, the indifference we cultivate as a form of self-protection. For Parini, a high school "is a kind of furnace," with the students as its fuel, and a family reunion is an invasion. His bracing new works are accompanied by key selections from The Anthracite Country (1982), Town Life (1988), and House of Days (1998). Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

In his poetry Parini answers the summons to remember and to declaim, with honesty, humor, and grief, -- The Hudson Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 130 pages
• Publisher: George Braziller (April 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807615463
• ISBN-13: 978-0807615461
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,580,116 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jay Parini is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College, Vermont. His six novels also include Benjamins Crossing and The Apprentice Lover. His volumes of poetry include The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems. In addition to biographies of John Steinbeck, Robert Frost and William Faulkner, he has written a volume of essays on literature and politics, as well as The Art of Teaching. He edited the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature and writes regularly for the Guardian and other publications.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Decent Stuff, July 9, 2008

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G. Charles Steiner - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems (Paperback)

The best poem in the whole collection is a long(ish) elegaic poem called "A Conversation in Oxford" and is about the ideas of Isaiah Berlin. The poem cleverly and touchingly summarizes the essence of Isaiah Berlin's long life of thought on history and mind.

A poem entitled "Summer People" -- about beautiful and rich tennis players on vacation -- was good social commentary, though perhaps not as sophisticated nor as witty as Dana Gioia's poem on the same subject (rich idle people in their tennis whites) entitled "At the Waterfront Cafe."

A poem about a blind man tapping with his white cane (a symbol for the poet's intution) -- entitled "White Cane"-- seems to demonstrate the poet's own methods of composition while confessing a "lack of (poetic or philosophic) vision."

Because I am half Italian and know Parini to be fully Italian, I found the poem "Family Reunion" and his reference to "spaghetti junction" in it extremely funny and the entire poem sadly true to adult experience.

While critics, I think, have overstated the power to be found in Parini's political poetry, I found "State of the Union" to be the one and only political poem that had a clear and passionate point of view; it is a joy to read (as a left-leaning liberal).

I didn't think it was possible to find poetry in power stations or in sewerage, but Jay Parini found a way to do so, and I experienced many an enjoyable moment reading his poems.

I read this collection backwards -- from his latest poems back to his earliest poems at the front of the volume. Following this method, I was able to trace Parini's unmistakeable growth as a poet. The later poems are denser, more sophisticated, tightly condensed whereas the earlier poems, by contrast, seem almost "bald" and more innocent, simpler in their "subtractions."