Figment [Hardcover]

Rebecca Wolff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 3, 2004

"FIGMENT is a book of dark and witty poems, an amalgam of discrete parts: postconfessional lyric; poems that inhabit a territory of attempted engagement, of earnest failure to engage; poems written under the guiding star of the sentence fragment; and a series of spoofs and riffs on the vagaries of social interactions.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Though she won admiration for the fast-moving verse of Manderley (a Robert Pinsky pick for the National Poetry Series), Wolff remains best-known as a founder and editor of Fence, the New Yorkâ€"based journal and press that continues to put forth a constellation of hip, evasive, challenging young poets often called "elliptical." This second collection highlights some of the verse techniques readers of Fence might expect: its scenes and fragments are urbane, knowing, always alert to irony, particularly when gender-related: "If I could only learn to make the perfect skirt/ I would never work again," the first poem notes. The work that follows projects a vivid wit that at its best perfectly skirts prose sense and story, promising instead "to kiss you/ smack on the vocabulary." Wolff's recurrent subjects include motherhood, Manhattan and the Atlantic Coast, as well as the white-collar workplace, where lyric often fears to tread. One poem, called (with a wink) "I walk the property line" takes a break to explore a "Dark shade/ on the patch of grass where// I'm who I always wanted to be." At the end of a sequence of lyrics, Wolff's speaker announces "I am the genie of self-critique," and takes "a militant stance against encroaching/ cynicism." Taking simultaneous shots at militancy and cynicism is part of this book's main dynamic; in a space where "It all happens so fastâ€"/ ovulation, creation, cremation," a variety of poses, or figments, may seem all that is left. Wolff's poems manage to make embracing them seem like a genuine possibility.
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About the Author

Rebecca Wolff, author of Manderley and founding editor of Fence, lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (May 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393059189
• ISBN-13: 978-0393059182
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,814,443 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Dickinson, Plath, and a smidgin of teen angst, May 28, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Figment (Hardcover)

Figment is a good book of poems, but the smarmy, self-deprecating voice that rears its head every now and then is less ear-catching than pitiful. Priscilla Becker does this voice far better. We're back to the confessional mode with Figment, not out on the front guard, and that's fine. The word games Wolff toys with in the poem are fun, too, but one wishes they'd add up to a little more. There is promise here, but it's not realized because of a bad attitude by the speaker, it seems. The speaker(s) of these poems seem to be traumatized by language (O Language, why did you betray me?!), but only when the speaker glories in the language do the poems succeed. See Sylvia Plath. Plath rarely cut language's throat (as so often Wolff does): you'll see it in the fragmentation of the poems. But the poems are far better than most of the stuff you read in Fence. The best poems are in the first section. Or maybe I got tired of the attitude. Either way, it's worth checking out.

4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "It's got to be the d's and p's, you know", May 9, 2004

By 

D. E. Steward (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Figment (Hardcover)

This is Rebecca Wolff's second collection. Her first, Manderlay, out only two years before this one, was chosen by Robert Pinsky for the National Poetry Series. Now Figment appears as winner of the Bernard Women Poets Prize in 2003. Crack this vibrant book anywhere and you know instantly why this young poet is way beyond the norm and why both her books have received such plaudits. Her cogent and dramatic juxtapositions lift from jarring image and ringing syllables. Her voice emerges in these poems from new-century concerns with an absolutely contemporary diction scalding in its accuracies. Read Figment and test language at its strongest.