Frameless Windows, Squares of Light: Poems [Paperback]

Cathy Song (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2003

“Poignant visions of childhood, the family, and moments of perception that become 'a study of small pleasures' to be recalled and savored.”—Library Journal

Cathy Song's poems are "bouquets to those moments in life that seemed minor but in retrospect count the most," Richard Hugo said of the poet's first book. "She accommodates experiential extremes with a sensibility strengthened by patience that is centuries old, ancestral, tribal, a gift passed down."

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Song's poems are often as pictorial as her title. She attempts to freeze the moment (a recurring word) so that it can be retrieved like a lost button "out of a cluttered life." The past and present fuse until "It seems you've been looking out/ one window, one moment all your life. . . ." Occasionally reliance on narrative lead to lines like, "A year later he suffered a myocardial infarction," which have little poetic resonance, but at her best she gives us poignant visions of childhood, the family, and moments of perception that become "a study of small pleasures" to be recalled and savored. Grace Bauer, formerly with New Orleans P.L.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Song works to capture the events and characters in the manner of a skilled and sensitive photographer. (Minneapolis Star-Tribune )

Product Details

• Paperback: 84 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (December 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393305929
• ISBN-13: 978-0393305920
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 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: #2,368,174 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A world suffused with light, May 2, 2000

By 

Becky Ragland (New Haven, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Frameless Windows, Squares of Light: Poems (Paperback)

Cathy Song's poems represent a sensitivity to the material world, the tenous connections between people, and the way in which culture suffuses our experience. As a young mother, I especially appreciate her sensitive exploration of the ties between mother and child. Without becoming maudlin or sentimental, she still captures the conflict of connectedness and separateness that this relationship entails. In Water Wings she writes about her son learning to swim. She speaks of the morning he leaves behind his inflatable "Water wings": This is sadness, I tell myself,/ the morning he chooses to leave his wings behind,/ because he will not remember/ that he and beauty were aligned,/ skimming across the water, nearly airborne,/ on his first solo flight/.../ At the other end,/ in another time frame,/ he waits for me-/ having already outdistanced this body,/ the one that slipped from me like a fish,/ floating, free of itself.