Borrowed Love Poems (Poets, Penguin) [Paperback]

John Yau (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0142000515 | ISBN-13: 978-0142000519 | Publication Date: March 26, 2002

If the "I" cannot be representative, what or who can it represent? In John Yau's new collection, Borrowed Love Poems, the reader encounters artists (Hiroshige and Eva Hesse), poets (Marina Tsvetayeva and Georg Trakl), actors (Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre), and memorable figures (a retired wrestler and a private eye named Genghis Chan). Each becomes a spectral, sonorous presence inhabiting the polymorphic body of the page, a shadow of a shadow lit from within. Yau's poems are dazzling explorations of the multiple, shifting sands of identity, of the fictional, fake, factual, and autobiographical selves that pass like ghosts through the empty space known as "I." Able to seamlessly merge a strict yet eccentric methodology with wild flights of the imagination, Yau moves into a rich, complex realm, where the flickering edges of consciousness-the dream state-become poetry.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Landing somewhere between the surreal-noir aesthetics of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive; a kinder, gentler version of J.K. Huysman's Paris decadence; and the aggregated syllables of Jackson Mac Low's overheard New York, Yau's new poems churn along with the bright inventiveness that have characterized his work before and since the selected Radiant Silhouette from 1990. This eighth collection continues several of the series and modes engaged in that volume the Genghis Chan poems, the briefs to poets and painters and fans will revel in the weird, ghostly wisdom of his lines, punctuated by the poet's trademark "le mot injust" verbal choices: "The circles float in their perfect mouths of ink." First-person forms of "to be" appear frequently "I am called Gobi Snow"; "I was not born in Dulwich or Brighton, but in Camberwell, south London"; "I wasn't always a fevered lepidopterist" to the point where "I Was A Poet In The House of Frankenstein" is a litany of such statements. Calling this form of self-portraiture (like trying to see your reflection in a melting box of crayons) "Love Poems" gives a campy sheen to Yau's behind-the-curtain confessions; the whole can be read as a wry take on poems of identity, ethnic or otherwise. This evisceration of the myth of self-revelation grants a pathos to Yau's distinctively dispassionate accounts of facing love as a "nude drummer boy, all pomade and fancy."
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

John Yau is a well-known poet, critic, and editor. he has published eight books of poems and several works of prose, as well as monographs on the work of Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and A. R. Penck. His poetry and criticism have been published in dozens of national magazines.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (March 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142000515
• ISBN-13: 978-0142000519
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.9 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,800,777 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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