Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric [Paperback]

Claudia Rankine (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 26, 2004

In this powerful sequence of TV images and essay, Claudia Rankine explores the personal and political unrest of our volatile new century

I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes
me the saddest. The sadness is not really about
George W. or our American optimism; the
sadness lives in the recognition that a life can
not matter.

The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric, the essay, and the visual in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America. With wit and intelligence, Rankine strives toward an unprecedented clarity-of thought, imagination, and sentence-making-while arguing that recognition of others is the only salvation for ourselves, our art, and our government.

Don't Let Me Be Lonely is an important new confrontation with our culture, with a voice at its heart bewildered by its inadequacy in the face of race riots, terrorist attacks, medicated depression, and the antagonism of the television that won't leave us alone.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...Offers a staggering record of a response to the media before and after 9/11." -- —NYFA

"Striking out from ground zero, [Rankine] still sees territory for lighting. I say let’s go." -- —Bridge Online

"Unabashedly, startlingly, successfully partakes of this contemporary combination of turbulence and torpor. It’s consuming to read, engulfing. Raw." -- —Pleiades

About the Author

Claudia Rankine is the author of three collections of poetry: Nothing in Nature Is Private, The End of the Alphabet, and Plot. She teaches at the University of Georgia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press; First Edition edition (August 26, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555974074
• ISBN-13: 978-1555974077
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #336,582 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars America in All Its Lyrical Truth April 16, 2005

By Hector Carbajal

Format:Paperback

Image and word shape a unique poetry collection that only Rankine can deliver. The shape of this book initially drew my attention. However, I was not necessarily attracted to the book's front cover. Nevertheless, the selected photographs throughout the collection fit perfectly with the political nature of some of the poems.

The book itself has no index, thus making the entire structure of the book unconventional, a word describing Rankine's vision of America in all its "darkness." I would like to believe that the author intended for readers to read all of the poems as one (considering that there is no index), thus making a linear reading mandatory. However, I read pieces of some of the poems, especially the lists, without specific care.

The photographs grabbed me by the throat. For example, the photograph accompanying the poem on page 117 shocked me. Nelson Mandela wears an "HIV Positive" shirt. The image made me think about the labels used in reference to HIV/AIDS. His smile and the two words, printed on his shirt, spoke loud.

I would like to believe that each of the poems reshapes the way we see paragraph form. The use of illustrations and lists disrupt the linear or "organized" way in reading these prose poems. As reader, I find myself conflicted by reading these poems. I am lost in a sense and I want that completion to be there in my whole/complete/unified reading. The poems on page 99 and 100, for example, create that tension. Thus, the use of dialogue, lines, prose pieces and images create a cross-flow of interventions, which I read as subversive.

I love this poetry collection because it has given me the courage to experiment more with my prose poetry. I also love it because it uses images to radically critique and, perhaps, heal.... What I find most interesting is the theme that image marks memory. Almost all of our senses are called to the surface here.

I am drawn to the way in which the poems make me think about many issues buried in the psyche. For example, the poem about Princess Diana made me think about scratching the surface of (an apparent) "universal" mourning and sense of loss. The poem on page 83 made a difference in terms of the law/Law and who protects us from terror/crime. Plus, it made me think about the who in that "us" equation.

In sum, Rankine speaks from a range of mediums that speak her poetry. They speak her voice. They shape her vision. Thus, is the brilliance of this poetry collection.

This collections is ideal for courses in Women's Studies, Feminist Studies, Ethnic Studies, Literary Studies, especially Graduate Studies in Poetry. Read more ›

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Very moving December 7, 2004

By M.W.

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I just got this book on a friend's recommendation and thought that I would glance through it before going to sleep but I couldn't put it down. I ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting and can't wait to go through it again. It is so beautifully written and complex and moving. It is not like a typical poety book in that it is structured more like essays but the essays blend together and fold into one another. It is like poetry in that the choice of words and phrases makes the work very emotionally charged and, well, I know this is a corny word, but I would say profound. It really is a work of art.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book of poetry-meaning nothing else like it October 24, 2011

By Diana M. Delgado

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

So, I'm going to have to begin by prefacing that I almost never review books of poetry despite my writing and reading poetry as a career and for fun. However, this book is so amazing because it introduces a multi-genre collection that does not feel highly-stylized or pretentious. What you end up with is a masterpiece that is both smart, and sad, and lonely, and informative of what it means to be alive, truly alive. I recommend this book especially if you are someone who is interested in books that defy genres and do it well.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars hauntingly beautiful September 27, 2010

By Anya

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I read this book for a poetry workshop I had joined on a whim (I'm not a poet, nor am I really all that familiar with the works of modern poets), and it completely changed the way I thought of poetry. Rankine's book is beautiful, accessible and a chilling portrait of what it's like to be an American in a post-9/11 world. It's hard to describe, really, what kind of book this is -- but poetry, memoir, documentary, whatever, it's fantastic.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A necessary book June 26, 2006

By Jennifer Dick

Format:Paperback

This is one of the books that defines our times. Greatly humourous and pleasantly dark in that ache to release you into the way you know personally, it's a book that comes to us and makes us say "oh, yes, that's it, exactly"--Personal, political, TV culture, taking lunch with a friend, reading a book, sitting up nights with insomnia, reaching out or wanting to learn to again reach out through the divides that silence us, bar us within our American apartments, border us inside of our familiar yet often dreary patterns, make us wary of change, exception, risk, thus creating risk, enmity, division and the loneliness we are so wanting not to face. Rankine's deftly-written prose-poem-political-poetics-essay collection challenges notions of poem, of self, of genres, of culture as she embodies in these smartly written sections through her mobile pronoun use, her pop culture references, her reflections on self and other, the way we need to put out a hand and take the risk of reaching towards another even before they reach out to us: before being loved, to love. How necessary! I simply want to thank her for reminding me of this as I go back and back and back into these pages, always finding more there, deeper.

3.0 out of 5 stars a little boring... August 7, 2012

By Adia's Promise

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

boring and scattered. the TV blank pages and the shape of the book was very unappealing. the story had good elements and the mixed media was pretty good but overall, it's not one of my favorite chapbooks.

5.0 out of 5 stars The lyrical essay ... what a great genre!! April 9, 2012

By George Brannen

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Claudia Rankine has produced .... well I had to read this piece of prose twice (the second time, I used the *end-notes to better get the full impack of her style and poetic thread). It made such an impression ... I appreciate that!!!

5.0 out of 5 stars What is the meaning of life? July 23, 2011

By Kent Shaw

Format:Paperback

It is apropos that Rankine would follow her book about giving birth (Plot) with this book about life. And what I mean here is life as that very complicated fact and concept that is always churning inside us. What does it mean that the liver is filtering out impurities, even as we sit on a couch watching television? In more well-worn terms, do we define life by our consciousness or our biology? Rankine chooses both for her answer. And I think I started really seeing the consequences of a choice like that when she offered up life as an alternative to death.

In my mind, Rankine's choice of the prose form, perhaps we could call it the mini-essay (what are you supposed to call those little stories by Lydia Davis?), fits with the intentions behind the book. The prose lets her knead away at this truth she's telling about life. There should be no doubt that form is important to Rankine. Just look at the formal choices she has made in her other books, especially Plot. How prose can affect a reader, and give access to some unspoken truth, should be fully considered by people who like this book. To me, this is what opens the book to more thorough reads in the future.