The Forest (Phoenix Poets) [Paperback]

Susan Stewart (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226774104 | ISBN-13: 978-0226774107 | Publication Date: September 1, 1995 | Edition: 1

Susan Stewart plumbs human history in an attempt to articulate the way language, memory, and art join in evoking consciousness. The Forest is about violence and memory: the violence we do to our surroundings and to ourselves; and the propensity of the human mind to exploit and rationalize in its longing for truth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An aura of mystery envelops Stewart's (The Hive) third collection of poetry. As she expresses it: "...Bright night, true story, far torch and door;/ neither yours nor mine, but both..." Narratives, often rooted in history and reminiscent of fairy tales, are told by unnamed speakers and peopled by figures that can't be pinned down. "Slaughter," a first-person account of learning to butcher, masterfully permits readers to identify with an invisible narrator pitted against an even more fleeting but all-powerful "they." Stewart stumbles slightly when she becomes self-consciously literary: as her endnotes inform us, "Nervous System" borrows its rhyme scheme from John Donne; the extremely weak, overly long "Medusa Anthology" uses language from Shakespeare and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Her own linguistic sensibility is refined enough not to require such academic justification, which also seems to curb her imagination. These few examples aside, this volume is a rare phenomenon in recent poetry: poems which require several readings, and promise to be equally intriguing each time.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Susan Stewart is the Avalon Foundation University Professor in the Humanities and director of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at Princeton University. A former MacArthur fellow, she is the author of five earlier critical studies, including Poetry and the Fate of the Senses (2002), winner of the Christian Gauss award of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and the Truman Capote Award. She is also the author of five books of poems, most recently Red Rover (2008) and Columbarium (2003), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. These titles, along with The Open Studio (2005) and The Forest (1995), are all published by the University of Chicago Press. 

 

 

 

 

 

Product Details

• Paperback: 86 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (September 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226774104
• ISBN-13: 978-0226774107
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #609,810 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ....., March 9, 2001

By 

R. Gahan (Clemson, SC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Forest (Phoenix Poets) (Hardcover)

I heard an interview on Ex Libris with Susan Stewart and soon after ordered The Forest. I like the way she uses language. There's a back and forth motion in her lines with words and ideas. Slaughter is at the beginning and about the slaughtering of a cow and how the slaughtering changes the cow to the point that it is no longer recognized as a cow, but as products to be used by people. The Forest is also about the same type of thing. We have what appears to be forests, but the forests that we know now have been controlled by people for so long that we don't know what real forests are. We only know facsimiles of forests. In places, she gets very academic and the voice that draws me in to listen is covered over. Overall, her mysterious and quiet voice speaks these poems that I will read again, entranced.