Res Publica (Phoenix Poets) [Hardcover]

Alan Williamson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0226899349 | ISBN-13: 978-0226899343 | Edition: 1

Res Publica faithfully moves from the private to the public, from individual experience to civic responsibility through an elegy for the 1960s and the world that has become our own.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A poet-critic driven to fuse oppositional notions?pop and literary, East and West coast, urbane and rural?Williamson (Love and the Soul) seems intent on showing how "this life/ we hold in common, and possess no more/ than breath, finds its old channel." Collective memories permeate this fourth collection's first section, which lingers around familiar images of the '60s?air-raid drills, fear of a Soviet invasion, campus unrest and urban violence?in order to register difficult paradoxes: "after Altamont, after Manson, we were afraid/ of our own side, no less than of their opposites/ who looked just like them." Like those of his contemporary David Wojahn, Williamson's chronicles of historical events and personalities are at their best when the poet grafts snatches of other modes like pop song, Blakean ontology and biography onto otherwise spare tales ("Listening to Leonard Cohen," "Puccini Dying" and "Red Cloud"). There are also explorations of lonely Great Plains towns and of "[t]he strength of Eastern winter...hoarding veins/ of snow like silver veins in half-thawed fields." Free-verse versions from Eugenio Montale retain the tight control of the master's restrictive forms, while a subtle, brief translation of Dante, dedicated to Robert Pinsky, shows Williamson's skill at terza rima. While there are a handful of poems that seem confusing in their engagement with Buddhist themes, Williamson consistently displays a keen interest in bringing together multiple aspects of late 20th-century America, where "The soul has to learn about cruelty."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Library Journal

Using allusions (to Buddha, Einstein, Puccini, etc.) and italicized phrases and words, these elliptical, intense poems by the author of Love and the Soul (Univ. of Chicago, 1995) reach for connections between high art and mass culture (headlines, laser arcades, movie stars, rock bands); the title of his collection, after all, means "public matters." These sharp-edged poems strike home when they engrave "lineaments" of a modern consciousness struggling to overcome loss of power, internal tension ("the charmed life, the afflicted life"), and restless anomie: "the spaces inside the moment." At their best, poems about the "pearly, brooding days" of an intellectual's experience evoke "half-vanished" borderline nuances of transience: "the poignant/ half-thereness of summer twilights." Like a Hopper canvas, "place of arrivings, going into nowhere," this work reveals a critical sense of how "feelingless" and lonely the landscape is "out into America, under the thick, full stars." Recommended for all contemporary collections.?Frank Allen, Northampton Community Coll., Tannersville, PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 82 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (November 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226899349
• ISBN-13: 978-0226899343
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 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: #8,988,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seeing America whole, June 23, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Res Publica (Phoenix Poets) (Paperback)

This poet with a strong personal voice in the Lowell tradition now writes about America since the 1960s, not in anger directly, but from anger recollected in tranquillity. Extraordinary richness and complexity.