Customer Reviews

Lie Awake Lake

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Lie Awake Lake is yet another crucial
collection for Beckian Fritz Goldberg.
Her style, a brilliant encounter of the
fragmented and edgy with the lyrical
and the rapt, is as good for being
inclusive as contemporary poetry gets.
I'm happily unnerved and pleased by
this stunning book.

"Idiot Spirit," Fritz Goldberg asks in this hypnotic book, "what do you want / but an arm and leg?" In considering the death of her father, this book sings of the split between spirit and flesh, the fact of our human losses tempered with story and enchantment. The poems in this book are part narrative, part confessional, and always lyric in their sensibility. What does it mean that our bodiness is attractive as both longed-for flesh and story? "A man can't look," the poet answers, "at a flower without knowing he's dying." Whether in a series of ode-like poems to body parts (eye, hand, foot, tongue, blood, and heart) or romantic philosophy ("beginning is / the flower to the ear") this work will remind you that poetry is still a source of important delight and solace. LIE AWAKE LAKE is one of my top five favorite books in as many years. Satisfying like a glass of great wine, a great night, and memory itself that must be taken and savored, and whose real value always escapes definition, these poems do not disappoint!