A Carnage in the Lovetrees (New California Poetry) [Paperback]

Richard Greenfield (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520238095 | ISBN-13: 978-0520238091 | Publication Date: April 30, 2003 | Edition: 1

"Surely, all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end," said Rilke. A Carnage in the Lovetrees begins at the moment the speaker reaches this realization. He resolves then to rebuild a world caught in the crosshairs of repeated annihilation, regrounding love as the only viable stratagem for survival. Richard Greenfield's sequence of poems searches for a way to live in the aftermath of private trauma and public disaster. It represents a struggle to reconcile the historical with the present and to find a language that allows the speaker to endure past calamities. These relentless, acrobatic, and self-aware poems resist settling for easy solutions, or even closure, but instead push toward the difficult compromise of the livable.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book is brilliance."--Bin Ramke, author of

From the Inside Flap

"Building slowly from pieces scattered, even shattered, but still unnervingly present, Greenfield's story speaks for many, yet he presents it uniquely, revealing language as a mode of perception that can rearrange the past--but only if it's quick enough. Greenfield's language is that quick--and sharp, and startlingly beautiful."--Cole Swensen, author of Such Rich Hour

"Like a blue-faced television in a darkened room, a backstory lights up this rhapsodic outpouring. This is a cunning attack on both the ever-fading memory and on conventional methods of poetic confession --'The trigger is set on annihilation.' I'm truly amazed by these poems."--Mary Jo Bang, author of Louise in Love

"Greenfield tells us to 'Recognize the world,' know it again, since the only knowledge that counts is re-cognition. He presents those second knowings, recapitulations, bright flashing revisitings of pain and pleasure, which enact a kind of fumbling seduction between us and the world. In this book we recognize our best possibilities, and our worst fears, but it is all brilliant. This book is brilliance."--Bin Ramke, author of Airs, Waters, Places

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Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (April 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520238095
• ISBN-13: 978-0520238091
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,188,286 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Haunting, meloncholy, and beautiful., February 20, 2011

By 

Valerie Smile "Valerie Reader" (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Carnage in the Lovetrees (New California Poetry) (Paperback)

Haunting, meloncholy, and beautiful. Richard Greenfield writes a lovely and disturbing collection of poems in this book. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in modern poetry.

5.0 out of 5 stars Top-rate book, March 4, 2007

By 

Igor "Igor" (Vladivostock) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Carnage in the Lovetrees (New California Poetry) (Paperback)

Although I'm no expert in poetry (and so few are!), I'll tell you what I liked, and maybe that will give you a taste of this book. First, I like the way Greenfield tries to capture memories. His unique abbreviated style is a sort of shorthand to recollections of another epoch in the speaker's life. I also like the way he breathes new life into tired comparisons by turns of line and phrase--for example, under his rendering, a trees' branches guide the growth of the speakers' nerves, in some sort of reciprocal plan. I also like the way I can hear wrenched ghosts of other writers--e.g. "My voice has been lonely to me & a tonnage of personal/ evacuations"--Berryman, anyone? Fourth, I enjoy the speaker's (Middle English?) habit of jamming two words next to each other to create something new: "lovetrees", "flamedress", "rageweed". I like the way rural images like abandoned homesteads and the "sugary purl" of snowmelt appear, perhaps reflecting Greenfield's own peripatetic biography. Sixth, I found the presentation of the speaker's drug-addicted, self-destructive father to be masterly, and loved and was troubled by the "slurred, ambitious rhetoric of his hollering." The emotional notes Greenfield hit on this topic are absolutely perfect to me. In fact, only one poem out of this whole hefty first book was silly ("Bibemus &"), but that's just fussing. I can't believe how good this book is compared to those of so many other poetry professionals who are so much better at self-promotion, and are so much better well known. I can only hope this stunning first bundle leads to more, and that Greenfield continues to be properly recognized as a first-rate artist of rare gifts and sensibility.