Birds of Hoboken: Poems [Paperback]

William Wenthe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1995 | ISBN-10: 0914061496 | ISBN-13: 978-0914061496

William Wenthe's Birds of Hoboken frankly considers the Postmodern assumption that our every view of reality is a construct: "maybe," he concedes, "we're invented / by a form-/ `love' like syntax/ the theorist might say." And if his volume is rich in ornithological erudition, Nature does not show itself there as the correspondent force of the Romantics but as "a realm inalienably not his own." The author even allows for "Danger in mediations." Yet Wenthe simultaneously stresses the half-truth of such trendy vision: rather than merely theorizing presence into absence, indifferent to any loss in the process; rather than adopting deconstruction's essential nihilism, whereby our "Fictions" (to cite the title of his eloquent final poem) automatically reduce themselves to inconsequence, in his brilliant first collection the writer affirms our capacity to craft crucial aesthetic, social and domestic relations. Indeed, in Birds of Hoboken, craft is supremely and everywhere evident, in all its senses: therefore, to read a poem like "Shadblow," say, is to see how far from quaint a term like "beautiful" shall remain, so long as the likes of William Wenthe continue to practice. -SYDNEY LEA

Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Orchises Pr (July 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0914061496
• ISBN-13: 978-0914061496
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,403,517 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BEAUTIFUL ELEGIAC POEMS, June 2, 2007

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Scott R. Hightower (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Birds of Hoboken: Poems (Paperback)

The artfully measured lines of these lovely poems move from ornithological and fishing observations (in New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City) to Dante and more philosophical questions of Love and God... from observations of the "remotenesses we haven't killed yet" to a choir of "ungainly voices positing an idea of harmony, in need of Something large enough to embrace us all, imagined out of our stunted love." The voice of these poems is quiet and observant -- elegant in every way. Line by line, so worth the read!