Home and Away (Poets, Penguin) [Mass Market Paperback]

Rachel Wetzsteon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1998 | Series: Poets, Penguin

Rachel Wetzsteon has been hailed by John Hollander as the writer of the "most impressive verse I have seen by anyone of her generation" and by Richard Howard as the "most variously gifted of our new poets." Variously compared to Emily Dickenson and Elizabeth Bishop, Wetzsteon displays her range of poetic voices and verse forms with an uncommon virtuosity. Her second collection features a musically resonant sonnet sequence, a poignant elegy for W. H. Auden, modern engagements with the world of myth, Narcissus, Pomona and others, and honest yet artful meditations, Home and Away is a brilliantly descriptive, skillful experimentation in verse.

From the title poem, "Home and Away":

and if a loving pair was what it took to turn a cityscape from brown to bright, both pair and city gained from the exchange-- it gave us history, we gave it life. Or so I figured.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The mischievous, incessantly social poems of Wetzsteon's second collection (following The Other Stars) cruise through erotically charged and haunted urban spaces, Ovidian greenhouses and the skeptical minds of cultural misfits. The opening sequence of 50 sonnets documents a doomed love affair in which hushed, blurred voices display entangled feelings of indignation and self-annihilation, but yield to Wetzsteon's talent for achieving a balanced wit: "And if a loving pair was what it took/ to turn a cityscape from brown to bright,/ both pair and city gained from the exchange?/ it gave us history, we gave it life." The next section's belated, sincere elegy for W.H. Auden addresses the difficulty of being a young poet coming at the end of a long line of older disciples. Other lyrics, especially the series of Browningesque monologues, like "Witness" and "Pomona"?the latter a hilarious parody of the garden-poem?present a delightful array of brash loners, as do the dark, defiant "Surgical Moves" and "Tagalong" ("I know I'm fraudulent, that wishing for/ a public version of my paler games/ is like excusing filth and slaughter as/ the visionary gleam someone had"). Readers may sometimes find themselves yearning, like the tired and fascinated narrator of "The Late Show," for "a duller but more intimate story," but Wetzsteon's sheen of elegance and formal poise is designed to show how "when we take our masks off/ new ones take their place."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Wetzsteon is already a much honored poet, and her second collection confirms her high status. A virtuoso of form, she breathes an astonishing amount of life into her crisply composed poems. The title poem, a series of sonnets, displays her tight control and free-flowing imagination, her sharp intelligence and swirling emotions, her sensitivity and worldliness. It begins from the vantage point of a park bench and spirals out into myth and eros through observations of nature, strangers, and art. The feisty narrator looks skeptically into the windows of mansions and longingly out of the portals of her apartment, contemplating love's dance and the taunt of mortality. Her other poems are shaped by a disarming knowingness and a determinedly unsentimental approach to poetics. Wetzsteon looks at flowers and sees intimations of lust and danger; she embraces the halt as well as the agile; and, chin up, shoulders squared, she dismisses all notion of a panacea, earning our trust as well as our admiration. Donna Seaman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Puffin (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140588922
• ISBN-13: 978-0140588927
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #627,877 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mixed Bag, October 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Home and Away (Poets, Penguin) (Mass Market Paperback)

This is not a rave or a slam. I agree with some of the comments by the other reviewers. Yes, Rachel Wetzsteon is a talented and smart writer. Yes, her poems can be clever and cold. I expect - and hope -- that she'll write better books in the future.

I enjoyed some of the poems, yawned at some. On the one hand they're intelligent, ironic, formally skillful, well-structured, smooth, controlled, never overwritten or sentimental. These qualities are valuable, especially these days, and shouldn't be taken for granted. On the other hand her poems take few risks, and can be too predictable, repetitive, controlled to the point of being bland, abstract, and unoriginal. A reviewer (in the Yale Review) once wrote that she's too derivative of Auden, and I have to agree. Her voice sounds particularly like middle and late Auden, with dashes of Larkin, Ashbery and Tate. (I like the odd combination of influences, though.) I look forward to the time when her own voice emerges, if it does. So far, I'd rank her in the middle of her generation of poets. (Obviously this will change, and obviously the whole generation hasn't emerged yet -- it could take 30 more years, if another Amy Clampitt comes along.)

By the way, I'm put off by the recent trend of using overblown jacket copy. Why is Wetzsteon likened to Dickinson or Bishop? This is false advertising, because she's not in their league. To be fair, few living poets are --- you can count them on the fingers of one hand. People should use such comparisons sparingly, and only after reading many, many contemporary poets, so that the accuracy of the comparison can be rigorously tested. Wetzsteon can be more fruitfully compared to Rachel Hadas or Andrew Motion, who share some of her virtues and vices, although I think she'll surpass them with time and hard work, and luck.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Clever but cold, July 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Home and Away (Poets, Penguin) (Mass Market Paperback)

There were a few poems I liked in here, but unfortunately this book is less than the sum of its parts. The voice is smart but smug, which is still okay in small doses. By the time you finish the book, you're sick of it! It's repetitive and boring. The author may write in verse forms well, but "verse" isn't enough. There has to be wisdom (not cleverness) and humility and feeling in poetry too, which this book lacks. Overall, a disappointment. Try Rafael Campo or Brenda Shaughnessy instead.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Of some interest, July 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Home and Away (Poets, Penguin) (Mass Market Paperback)

How Rachel Wetzsteon could be considered mentionable in the same breath as Dickinson only shows how silly people are determined to be when they finally discover a talented poet (which she certainly is). Few contemporary poets have her gift of memorable meter, and of thinking a poem from beginning to end, instead of pausing to "say". This is an enjoyable book, except when she tries to make clever turns of frustration-to-laughter ala Dorothy Parker. Parker wasn't really much of a poet, but she certainly was more amusing. Wetzsteon isn't blessed that way (although Dickinson certainly was), but she has a lot to offer. I hope she gets even better.