Customer Reviews

Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ms. Rankine is deep. Not very difficult, but deep. One of these folks you read and fill up the margins w/ your own ideas about stuff you want to write about...This work is about 9/11 and war and your liver and pharmaceutical companies and westerns and just a veritable cornucopia of musings on various topics. Very unique format- most pages have pictures on them which relate to the "poetry", which sounds like internal monologue sometimes...I've frankly never read a book of "poetry" like this- quite a genre-bending offering and though the book got a decent amt. of attention I think it deserves more...having read it, I'm now considering it as a gift this Christmas to a friend. A must have I think for a serious collector. Really more like a 4.5 rating....

I am myself an author who endeavors to cast light on who we really are rather than who we pretend to be (see my book Sing Soft, Sing Loud), and I most often do that by plumbing my own darkest depths. We are few; Rankine is one of us. Her collage of prose, poetry, and photographs is a stunning portrait of who we really are, with herself as one among many souls whose human condition she renders so powerfully. I have expanded my own view of the possible by reading this book and so consider her a writer's writer, the highest compliment I can give her.

Obviously the most important thing about Rankine's work is the format. It's an odd shaped book, full of white space, visual aides and concise paragraphs that resemble prose rather than poetry. But this book is nothing but a collection of poetry, just not in the traditional sense. In a way, even the pictures are poetry. I wonder what her editor must have thought? That here was an evolution of poetry, of literature? I believe the book is a brave way of looking at our selves, and our culture, and it says a lot when something as highbrow as poetry, something that hails itself as a modern American epic lyric, utilizes pictures, sometimes funny, sometimes ironic pictures. It's clever to use the image of a TV at the beginning of each section, as if we the reader are flipping through the channels of Rankine's life. It's clever too how she can insinuate the extent that the television, the media and commercialism, affect the way we are, even our very psychological health. It is sad as well to dwell on the position of our lives, our American lives, because this is a wholly American work, but it is conversely encouraging to know that we are unique in our bleak predicament. I think this is another genius of Rankine's, to create something that is entirely relatable, something that captures the sensation of living here. She gives us something to share and saves us from never having to be lonely.

Also, the book is a reinventing of our language. Aside from the strange form, Rankine reuses words such as `happily' or `miserable' (written on the chalkboard). She shows that even verbs, adjectives, adverbs and nouns have all become reassigned in our modern culture. They are now raw feeling. In a country as superficial and stark as our own, our feelings are all we know for sure.

This is as good a book of poetry as I've read in the last year. Rankine uses the prose-poem format and scatters images around the book, which I find entertains and lends itself to a certain philosophy-driven format that I like. The poetic buried in the prosaic seems to be a good way to say it. Either way, this book is 130 pages, impossibly long for most books of poetry. If this were any other style, I would have tired of it quickly, but I finished it in a few days.