The Country of Women [Hardcover]

Sandra Kohler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1995

Astonishing poems that reveal what it means to live in a woman's body

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Sandra Kohler's poetry shows well the distinction between domestic writing and the French l'ecriture feminine, or writing through the body. Her poems depict female experience at its most intimate, illuminating the paradoxes and practicalities in one's sense of physical identity ("I want to tell the truth: sex is not / the final intimacy for me"). Closeness rather than distanced objectivity becomes her palette: the son dreaming in his mother's lap, the child like a moon before birth and the sun, afterwards. In their simplicity, her images reveal a naked and honest truth. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Kohler's debut collection offers thoughtful, probing explorations of a broad range of female experience, from frank discussions about sex to delicate variations on motherhood and artistic creativity. In the long poem, "Ars Poetica Feminae," the speaker claims, "The woman who waits for a poem/ lives in a world calling her every instant: keep me alive." Adding a filmy, lyrical tone throughout is the "metaphysics of morning," Kohler's term for the borderland between sleep and waking, which can be observed most particularly in the dawn songs she composes about herself and her young son (traditionally, such poems were about lovers parting from their bed), describing a tenderness that hurts: "The caress of angels is bruising." Kohler'scareful attention to the daily struggles and realities of many women's lives, to the predictable but mysterious cycles of time and growing older, renders with both wisdom and astonishment her conviction that "Nothing is more exotic than the real."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: CALYX Books (July 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0934971463
• ISBN-13: 978-0934971461
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,169,419 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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