Oneiromance (an epithalamion) [Perfect Paperback]

Kathleen Rooney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0978617231 | ISBN-13: 978-0978617233

Poetry. Winner of the 2007 Gatewood Prize, Kathleen Rooney's ONEIROMANCE (AN EPITHALAMION) explores the absurdity and divinity of the marriage ceremony through a dizzying dream sequence with playful verse that skillfully blends call and response with Shakespearean odes, romance and cynicism, story-telling and wordplay. Patty Seyburn proclaims: "These poems contain deep doubt and true sentiment, providing that pleasure-giving union of provocation and renewal." Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press and the author of Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America (University of Arkansas, 2005).

Editorial Reviews

Review

For Kathleen Rooney a wedding is a script, and the ceremony takes place in at least six genres: cartoon, western, thriller, soap opera, documentary, and sitcom. Oneiromance (an epithalamion) is one long delirious "homage to the glorious / states of our unions," which are all the more glorious since "no one can explain the state that we're in." --From Christian Hawkey

Kathleen Rooney's beautifully structured epithalamion is saturated with nuptial terror: the music and friction, zeal and unease, absurdity and profundity of marriage. Oneiromance (an epithalamion) parodies and feasts upon the vain excesses of contemporary wedding culture, but there's tenderness and devotion here, too a sweetness that's saucy rather than cloying: "Her breasts seem to him lovely as mud- / daubed birds' nests." I'm thrilled by a sensibility so acerbic, funny, sad, sardonic, insouciant, salty, and bittersweet, by poems so rich with slippage, misgiving, loss, and wit. Rooney's work is animated by a dexterous, inventive intelligence and a fearless imagination: "those pearls / on your bodice are really your baby teeth?" Her poems fibrillate with fine surprises; their originality and edge are stunning. Like "a book in sandpaper" that could "destroy everything else on the shelves," Oneiromance (an epithalamion) is scary good, wicked good, and Kathleen Rooney is surely one of the most brilliant poets of her generation, a discovery. Her linguistic powers provoke and awaken the page. --From Alice Fulton

For Kathleen Rooney a wedding is a script, and the ceremony takes place in at least six genres: cartoon, western, thriller, soap opera, documentary, and sitcom. Oneiromance (an epithalamion) is one long delirious "homage to the glorious / states of our unions," which are all the more glorious since "no one can explain the state that we're in." --From Christian Hawkey

About the Author

Kathleen Rooney was born in West Virginia and raised in the Midwest. She is the author of Reading with Oprah: the Book Club That Changed America (University of Arkansas, 2005) and a founding editor of Rose Metal Press. Her essays have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Ninth Letter, Western Humanities Review, and Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers (Random House, 2006), and her criticism appears regularly in Boston Review, Harvard Review, Contemporary Poetry Review, and Provincetown Arts. Her collaborative chapbook Something Really Wonderful, co-written with Elisa Gabbert, is available from dancing girl press, and their full-length collection That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness is available from Otoliths Books. She works as a Senate Aide and lives in Chicago with her husband, the writer Martin Seay. Oneiromance (an epithalamion) won the 2007 Gatewood Prize for poetry (selected by judge Patty Seyburn) and is her first single-author collection of poetry.

Product Details

• Perfect Paperback: 59 pages
• Publisher: Switchback Books (October 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0978617231
• ISBN-13: 978-0978617233
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 4.7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,623,564 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A dreamy, lyrical, beautiful trip, November 22, 2008

By 

Angela Mcclendon Ossar (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Oneiromance (an epithalamion) (Perfect Paperback)

I don't tend to have much of an opinion of poetry beyond "It was good" or "I don't know, it was pretty I guess." But Oneiromance, a dreamy meditation on marriage, felt like a beautiful trip -- to Brazil, the Midwest, Niagara Falls, through the idea of marriage, through the mind and heart of the loving but conflicted bride. I read it and thought, I wish I could see what she sees when I travel, because what a beautiful and funny world I'd live in.