In this collection of poetry, Alfred Corn draws with extraordinary skill on narrative, figurative, and metrical resources to make vividly realized poems dealing with passion and presence.
| ||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Richard Howard, one of our most difficult to please literary critics, writes that Alfred Corn's poetry is accessible and bold, without simplification. It is, he goes on to say, "The gossip of the gods!" In "Parallels," Corn imagines two mirrors facing one another: "Each, in mirroring mirroring in each, / Reflects contrary counterfeits of truth, / A glass-green emptiness in shrinking frames. / Contempt? It's nothing but reversed self-loathing. / Imagine, instead, an act of conciliation, / Someone recalling how much there was to praise." The richness of the image (I've been mulling it over for a while now) and all that it suggests about projections and reflections, typifies Corn's subtle sophistication. "A Marriage in the Nineties" is funny and tender, "After Neruda" is elemental and vivid, and "Stepson Elegy" is beautiful in its honest, halting way.
From Library Journal
The poems that open Corn's seventh volume continue the theme of his previous work, the well-received Autobiographies (LJ 11/1/92). Whether writing in free verse or magically weaving in strict rhyme patterns, Corn combines memory and imagination into long, meditative poems that digress but never lose our interest. Carefully, he is coming to terms with the past, exploring how the small town in south Georgia that frustrated the child shaped the urban artist he is today. Corn is among those who, as in these words he translates from the Russian poet Marina Temkina, "feel nostalgic not for a place/ but for the comfort of being at one." If this book is problematic, it is because his identification with artists who have influenced him veers toward the intellectual rather than the emotional, a long way from the charming figure of the young boy discovering Goya captured in the volume's long prose piece. Highly recommended. [For a review of Corn's book on prosody, see p. 91, and for his first novel, see LJ 3/15/97.?Ed.]?Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," N.Y.
-?Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
-?Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet.
|
|||
|
Video reviews
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
