Provoked in Venice: The Rider Quintet, vol. 3 (Wesleyan Poetry Series) [Hardcover]

Mark Rudman (Author)

Book Description

Series: Wesleyan Poetry Series | Publication Date: April 9, 1999

The remarkable third volume in a trilogy that includes the award-winning Rider and Millennium Hotel.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This last installment of a trilogy (following Rider and Millennium Hotel), and Rudman's fifth collection of poems, is a fast-paced, confident, insistently secular synthesis of autobiography with the chaos of urban life in contemporary Italy. Rudman noticeably maintains the argumentative, dialogic style of the first two volumes, intermingling the voice of the Rider (an ever-present interlocutor resembling his deceased step-father, a rabbi, and his own conscience) with a narrator's alternately defensive and bold responses. His casual, conversational tone, and mix of prose and verse, permit a multitude of stream-of-consciousness remarks on films (real and imaginary--from Bardot to Brecht to Mary Shelley), memories, and jokes, all of which can seem relentlessly insular at times. Several poems based on Horatian odes assume a prophet's mantle in criticizing late-millenium, quick-fix political reform; while other pieces like "Tomahawk" and "Phaeton's Dream: Driving Lessons in the Desert" are over-the-top renderings of personal remembrances and mythological tales. But Rudman reserves most of his poetic energy for the book's dominant theme, Venice, where "everything is swirling" and "what cannot be effaced, erased, or reproduced, is experience." The last two sequences, "Venice: The Return in Winter," are his most extensive and innovative, and most tautly lyrical: "the raft/ where you wait to catch the vaporetto/ began to bob rhythmically,/ and millions of/ bizzarely curious people began to pour/ throughout the maze, this labyrinth, this/ Venice." The allusions Rudman allows himself--to the art of Tintoretto, to Mann, James and Rilke--target a rather cultured set of readers, while his own experience allows a broader perspective on the city--perhaps the next best thing to being there.

Copyright 1998 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

"This last installment of a trilogy, and Rudman's fifth collection of poems, is a fast-paced, confident, insistently secular synthesis of autobiography with the chaos of urban life in contemporary Italy...Rudman reserves most of his poetic energy for the book's dominant theme, Venice, where 'everything is swirling' and 'what cannot be effaced, erased, or reproduced, is experience.'...His own experience allows a boarder perspective on the city-perhaps the next best thing to being there."--Publishers Weekly --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 212 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan (April 9, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819563536
• ISBN-13: 978-0819563538
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,749,289 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 Provoked to read more, March 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Provoked in Venice: The Rider Quintet, vol. 3 (Wesleyan Poetry Series) (Paperback)

I'm going to have to contest that as large as this book is, it seems a little moronic to try and sum it up in a one-sentence review, somewhat wittily titled. That is why I didn't find what was on this page, review-wise, "helpful." Mark Rudman's book is exploratory, an array of forms, and of the voices heard in them. You get the feeling you've never heard ideas before in a poem, then you realize you've never heard ideas expressed like this in a poem. As much as is implicit in Hart Crane is found here in dialogue, as much as Robert Lowell chisels, Mark Rudman pieces together. "Venice is a mystery beyond any solution," is only one of the epigrams you can pull out of "Provoked..." if you just pass through it, and admire for being succinct, yet broad enough to suggest the intuitive grasp behind the rest of the book's inquisitions. Altogether I wouldn't give "Provoked" five stars because it suggests, as great works should, some feeling...that there's more.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ...a shame it didn't win the Pulitzer last year., March 19, 2001

By 

"mjm240" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Provoked in Venice: The Rider Quintet, vol. 3 (Wesleyan Poetry Series) (Paperback)

One should do himself/herself a favor and read PROVOKED IN VENICE, the third installment of Mark Rudman's exceptional and audacious trilogy. One finds deft lyrical poems distinguished not only as fine parts collected in the whole of a book, but also for their thematic progression that affords an extremely rewarding read. This is a book rich in allusion and cultural reference, but is ultimately marked by the elementary capacity to learn through experience. An extremely capable book that deserves reading after reading...a shame it didn't win the Pulitzer last year.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, July 21, 2004

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Provoked in Venice: The Rider Quintet, vol. 3 (Wesleyan Poetry Series) (Paperback)

I only bought this book because it was required for a course I was enrolled in and which Rudman taught. Like Provoked In Venice, the course and instructor were insufferable. Save your money for something worth your time and attention.