The Book of Seventy (Pitt Poetry Series) [Paperback]

Alicia Suskin Ostriker (Author)

Book Description

Series: Pitt Poetry Series | Publication Date: October 28, 2009

Alicia Ostriker seizes the opportunity to take us where too few poets have been able to take us: into a domain of what our fabulists like to call the “golden years.” as we live longer, we become inevitably curious about the actual texture of these late years, curious about what happens in the soul. Out of that curiosity is a new kind of poetry born, an elderstile that has passion and irony, wisdom, folly, clarity and tenderness. In her keen engagement with the self and the world, Ostriker offers us a voice and a perspective that explore the territory of seventy and beyond.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“In this passionate, thoughtful collection, Ostriker approaches aging, politics, myth, and sensuality. With wisdom, she lyrically questions the world and the death and beauty that are a part of it.”
—American Poet

“There’s a forthrightness to even the most difficult realizations in Ostriker’s work, born of fidelity to craft and emotional truth, making them not only welcome, but necessary. . . . Through the elastic instrument of one voice as it grapples, ponders, digs, almost revels in ndissonance, and ultimately mellows, these poems mae a kind of tough peace.”
—Pleiades

“Here is a hard, obdurate, elusive sort of beauty. Alicia Ostriker is not only one of our very best poets but one of our most crucial.”
—Joyce Carol Oates

“I found these poems to get stronger, stranger, more religious and more beautiful with each reading. I urge you to spend time with them and ‘drink their bliss.’”
—Jewish Book World

“Alicia Ostriker is a fool for beauty. She says so on 'West Fourth Street.'  She is also a fool for wisdom but, like a smart sage, she does it slant. I'm shocked by these poems, shocked by how good they are. How many skins has she shed to get here? Just take a look at a short poem called 'Dear God' or 'Born in the USA' or fifteen others. Amazing.”
—Gerald Stern

“Ostriker takes us into a domain of what some like to call the ‘golden yerars.’ As we live longer, we become inevitably curious about the actual texture of these late years, curious about what happens in the soul. Out of that curiosity is born a new kind of poetry. Ostriker offers us a voice and a perspective that explore the territory of seventy and behond.”
—Shofar

“The Book of Seventy  will speak to everyone: Alicia Ostriker's honest voice, her humor, her wisdom, her gutsiness; her scholarly, longing mind; her knowing body: 'my mind is a cervix / I can imagine anything'; and from the first page to the last, her long-recognized courage in facing down—even welcoming—just about everything.”
—Jean Valentine

“Many of the poems in this book fill me with awe and pleasure. . . . Readings these poems felt like having a conversation with a friend who is witty, learned, bawdy, compassionate, and a hell of a good poet. If this is ‘The Book of Seventy,’ bring on ‘The Book of Eighty.’”
—Poet Lore

About the Author

Alicia Suskin Ostriker is the author of eleven previous poetry collections, including: The Mother/Child Papers; No Heaven; the volcano sequence; and The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998.  She has received the Paterson Poetry Prize, the William Carlos Williams Award, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Award, and has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award. Ostirker is Professor Emerita of English at Rutgers University and teaches in the low-residency MFA program of Drew University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press; 1 edition (October 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822960516
• ISBN-13: 978-0822960515
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #981,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Teach us to read, teach us to think, teach us to love, November 15, 2009

By 

Julie R. Enszer (University Park, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Seventy (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

In "The Book of Seventy," Ostriker's twelfth book of poetry, she returns to some of the themes of her earlier poetry as well as themes that have shaped her prose, but in "The Book of Seventy" her language, her thinking, her images are more distilled, more urgent. That is what makes this a necessary book. Whether writing about mortality, the closely observed quotidian, or reconsidering the voices of Kali, Persephone, and Gaia, Ostriker renders poems in this collection that are breath-taking in their exactitude and density. This is a collection of a commanding poet demonstrating the excellence of her craft and her intuition.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Praise for The Book of Seventy, November 13, 2009

By 

Patricia Fargnoli, NH Poet Laureate 12/2006-3... (NH, United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Book of Seventy (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

I own this book and loved reading it....it's tender and tough and honest about the later years (which I'm in too). And the news it carries about life, about our lives, is vital for all ages.

5.0 out of 5 stars Should've won a Pulitzer in Poetry, October 15, 2011

By 

Prof - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Book of Seventy (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

One of these days Alicia Ostriker will take home the recognition she deserves--a Pulitzer or the National Book Award feel long overdue. Poignant, funny, pithy, wry--her poems create memories that you're almost sure were yours before they were hers--so much a part of your brain do they become. She also spins fables and prayers. One of my favorites oddities is this.

The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog

To be blessed
said the old woman
is to live and work
so hard
God's love
washes right through you
like milk through a cow

To be blessed
said the dark red tulip
is to knock their eyes out
with the slug of lust
implied by
your up-ended skirt

To be blessed
said the dog
is to have a pinch
of God
inside you
and all the other
dogs can smell it