The Dead Alive and Busy (Phoenix Poets) [Hardcover]

Alan Shapiro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0226750507 | ISBN-13: 978-0226750507 | Edition: 1

In his sixth book of poems, Alan Shapiro once again shows that he is a master at articulating the secrets of the heart. The Dead Alive and Busy deals with issues of personal identity as revealed through examining the intimate bonds of family life. The poems explore these familial relations in terms of the religious, social, and literary contexts that inform them, delving into such universal themes as human frailty, illness and death, bereavement, and thwarted desires. By turns lyrical and narrative, slangy and elevated, analytical and visionary, this collection showcases one of America's most important poets in his top form.

Praise for Alan Shapiro: "Shapiro is a shrewd and sympathetic moralist. He never trivializes his subjects with high-minded flourishes or stylistic gimmicks."—J. D. McClatchy, New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

With its opening poems, Shapiro's (Mixed Company) seventh collection would seem to be the apex toward which his previous work was heading. Any readers not afraid of strong emotion will be moved by the mix of honesty and na?vet? that fills the book's first 20-odd pages. Shapiro calls his dying parents into focus with the same sort of sensuality that distinguishes Sharon Olds's poems about her children--although his continual references to Greek gods seems a bit overstated. And, unfortunately, his other poems simply don't hold up as well. The pieces in the book's second section are perfectly well crafted, but with the exception of a few poems about his daughter and one about hitchhiking, they are unmemorable. In the third and final section, we face illness and death again as Shapiro describes an unnamed woman dying before her time; once more, our interest is aroused. But while these poems make a serious stab at the brilliance with which this volume began, their lack of specificity prevents the reader from forming a bond. Despite these reservations, this book is recommended for most collections given Shapiro's stature.
-Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

...a collection weighted with grief... -- The New York Times Book Review, Michael Hainey --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 89 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (April 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226750507
• ISBN-13: 978-0226750507
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,944,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a mature, compelling book of poems, August 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Dead Alive and Busy (Phoenix Poets) (Paperback)

The Times reviewer is right that THE DEAD ALIVE AND BUSY is "weighted with grief," but that's only the half of it. Shapiro is a master of structure, a poetic maker who understands that what makes grief bearable is the song the poet builds to contain feeling. This volume begins with an extraordinary hymn to Apollo, a poem which points to the way that poetry's work is to marry the pleasures of music to the stuff of human experience -- to sing, in other words, about our suffering, our failures and our nobility. It's a poem that points to this collection's project, and prepares us for the deep humanity, psychological insight, and formal grace of the poems that follow. This is one of the best books of the year.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ghosts of Poetics, Poetics of Ghosts, May 22, 2001

By 

Lucas Klein (Beijing) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dead Alive and Busy (Phoenix Poets) (Paperback)

Alan Shapiro has, in this volume, created a world where, for better or for worse, the past is not missing: instead, it walks around in our world, befriending us or pestering us, stopping at nothing, even death. And yet these are poems of loss, or loss that will not complete itself, as in Joyce's "absence is the highest form of presence."

Take the poem "Ghost," in which a dead woman speaks to her widower: even the past is haunted by its own past. Or the poems of or to the speaker's dead or dying relatives & loved ones: the touches that have ended in withdrawn hands but remain in lingering feeling.

Shapiro's knowledge of poetry is astounding, & he uses that knowledge (which is, by the way, so much more than mere knowledge) to build subtle, strong, and elegant poetry. He has been doing it for years; his earlier work--excellent as it is--is mere exercize for the power of The Dead Alive and Busy.