The Character (Barnard New Women Poets Series) [Paperback]

Jena Osman (Author)

Book Description

Series: Barnard New Women Poets Series | Publication Date: May 1, 1999

Winner of the 1998 Barnard New Women Poets Prize

The poems in Jena Osman's first volume embody the poem as performance, revealing the tensions between narrative coherence and Brechtian self-consciousness, and our constitution by "characters" of all types. Playful, mysterious, and challenging, The Character is for anyone interested in the inscription of power by means of language.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The best series currently introducing new writers to the public. -Booklist

"The extraordinary inventiveness and particularity of this writing make the common ways of proposing a world vividly apparent. The modus of our statement is the determinant of our powers. Viva Jena Osman!" -Robert Creeley

"Whether exploring the possibilities of new forms or imagining a theatrical space for writing, Jena Osman keeps her focus on crafting poems that are consummately articulate in their precise registers and their intricate measures. With The Character, Osman comes onstage to take her place as one of the most inventive and reflective poets of her generation." -Charles Bernstein

"Jena Osman's writing, in The Character, is at once sensation of an essay form and imploding that from the inside. Her writing is the way the mind works, simultaneity. This is exciting and discovery." -Leslie Scalapino

About the Author

Jena Osman's poems have appeared in Abacus, Avec, Big Allis, Conjunctions, O-blek, Subliminal Time, and elsewhere. She is coeditor of the influential magazine Chain, and lives in Pennsylvania.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (May 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807068470
• ISBN-13: 978-0807068472
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,691,621 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jena Osman is awake and she wakes us up, October 16, 1999

By 

Jacasta Bunbury (Boulder, Colorado USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Character (Barnard New Women Poets Series) (Paperback)

The Character does not permit us the stasis necessary to sustain a single interpretation. Jena Osman does not begin with the struggle of the line. Instead, she subverts our notions of closure with, in the words of poet Amy Catanzano, a form "that is both circular and layered." By using the gloriously belligerent methodolgies of diverse linguistic traditions,she produces a space for great freedoms and madness in the realm of poetry. I would like to give her three thousand dollars to go to China and return with a hypertext haiku!