The End of the Alphabet: Poems [Hardcover]

Claudia Rankine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 1998

These poems — intrepid, obsessive, and erotic — tell the story of a woman's attempt to overcome despair. Claudia Rankine, whose first collection was the prize-winning Nothing in Nature is Private, creates a transfixing testimonial to a woman facing her own disease. Drawing on voices from Jane Eyre to Lady MacBeth, Rankine welds the cerebral and the spiritual, the sensual and the grotesque, courting paradox into the center of her voice.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This second collection from the Jamaican-born Rankine marks a decided aesthetic departure from her first (Nothing in Nature Is Private, Cleveland State Univ., 1995), which was a candid, lyrical exploration of emotionally charged boundaries. Alphabet is an extended monolog composed in 12 sets of poetic sequences whose liquid and shifting arrangements owe more to Objectivist and Language Poetry schools?and to the free association of psychoanalysis?than to writing workshop conventions. In highly metaphorical yet abstract language, the poems trace a quest "to locate the self salvaged," but any such goal risks solipsism, something Rankine manages to sidestep (as in "Testimonial") only when she directs her attention to the physical world. Otherwise, "the striving after," as harrowing and hallucinogenic as it can sometimes be, is diluted by a disembodied, blurry impressionism. Certainly Rankine's is a singular voice, and though her journey into the interior is fraught with indirection, one must admire the risks she takes.?Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Cast Away Moan (1)
Cast Away Moan (2)
Cast Away Moan (3)
Dirtied Up (1)
Dirtied Up (2)
Dirtied Up (3)
Elsewhere, Things Tend (1)
Elsewhere, Things Tend (2)
Elsewhere, Things Tend (3)
Extent And Root Of (1). Elsewhere, Things Tend
Extent And Root Of (2)
Extent And Root Of (3)
Extent And Root Of (4)
Extent And Root Of (5)
Extent And Root Of (6)
Extent And Root Of (7)
Hunger To The Table (1)
Hunger To The Table (2)
Hunger To The Table (3)
Hunger To The Table (4)
In This Sense Beyond (1)
In This Sense Beyond (2)
In This Sense Beyond (3)
In This Sense Beyond (4)
In This Sense Beyond (5)
In This Sense Beyond (6)
In This Sense Beyond (7)
In This Sense Beyond (8)
Overview Is A Place (1)
Overview Is A Place (2)
Overview Is A Place (3)
Overview Is A Place (4)
The Quotidian (1)
The Quotidian (2)
The Quotidian (3)
Residual In The Hour (1)
Residual In The Hour (10)
Residual In The Hour (2)
Residual In The Hour (3)
Residual In The Hour (4)
Residual In The Hour (5)
Residual In The Hour (6)
Residual In The Hour (7)
Residual In The Hour (8)
Residual In The Hour (9)
Testimonial (1)
Testimonial (2). Atlantic Shores
Testimonial (3)
Testimonial (4)
Toward Biography (1)
Toward Biography (2)
Toward Biography (3)
Toward Biography (4)
Toward Biography (5)
Toward Biography (6)
Toward Biography (7)
Toward Biography (8)
Toward Biography (9)
Where Is The Sea? (1)
Where Is The Sea? (2)
Where Is The Sea? (3)
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (September 14, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802116345
• ISBN-13: 978-0802116345
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.6 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: #1,551,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An engrossing, challenging read., June 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The End of the Alphabet: Poems (Hardcover)

The language in this book is compact and highly charged, yet seems to run parallel to circumstances, as opposed to intersecting them; the actual events are relegated to the coincidental. It is as if the reader were being guided into a dark basement, the speaker wielding the flashlight, determining what is to be seen and what must simply be sensed. Lines such as "rip the mind out. go ahead," and "...our lives umbilical, tied up with living with how far/we can enter into hell and still sit down for Sunday dinner," leap off the page as starkly as a beam of light piercing the dark and falling onto a dreadful shape. The End of the Alphabet boldly explores the mysterious hinterlands of what poetry can be: an attempt to negotiate that indeterminate realm between experience and language.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary poetry., June 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The End of the Alphabet: Poems (Hardcover)

This is one of the best modern poetry books I've read. It is moving and powerful. I read the book straight through and then started again. This book, to me, is what poetry should be - language that effects one at a level deeper than concious understanding.