Sakura Park: Poems [Paperback]

Rachel Wetzsteon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 2006

A spirited new book from "the most variously gifted of our new poets" (Richard Howard).

With this third collection, Rachel Wetzsteon continues to imprint American verse with her particular brand of smart, tart poems. These new pieces employ her remarkable formal agility in order to showcase an assortment of quarreling themes: learning and loss, autonomy and loneliness, love and work. The result is the rare book that is equal parts sass and sorrow.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this accessible yet sinuous third collection, New York City's landscape becomes a subtle metaphor for a complex inner life in which hope makes room for despair and joyful recklessness attempts to coexist with sober wisdom. Using a variety of forms—from sonnets, haikus and ghazals to extended free verse and prose poems—Wetzsteon probes disturbing contradictions: "the heart's response is a matter of / degree, not kind—whether the ax is lifted / in ardor or in fury, the frozen sea still melts." She revels in melancholy, imploring, "[t]ake me back / to where thunder claps in minds and skies / and hearts are glad to be unhappy," and admits that there is safety in identifying with one's own pain: "I'm lost without my precious wounds; scrape the welts away and there's no one left to be kind to." Finally, in the title poem, set in a park near the poet's New York home, where "petals lift and scatter / like versions of myself I was on the verge / of becoming," Wetzsteon (Home and Away, 1998) acknowledges the futility, and also the necessity, of her struggle: while awaiting "sweet reprieve /... / meanwhile's far from nothing:/ the humming moment, the rustle of cherry trees." These poems are deep and artfully crafted. (July 7)
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Review

No glass of wine to be savored; she's a shot of whiskey, a jolt to the sensibilities, burning and potent. -- Booklist

Wetzsteon's effortless lyricism gives her moralized landscapes and urban pastorals a fluent grace. But her poems also sparkle with mischief. -- Rachel Hadas

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Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Persea; 1 edition (July 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892553243
• ISBN-13: 978-0892553242
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.9 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 (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #608,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Too Much Of A Good Thing Is Never Enough, August 11, 2006

By 

R. Babstock (Oakland Gardens, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sakura Park: Poems (Paperback)

I've been waiting for this collection to come out for some time based on the strength of pieces like "Love and Work" first featured in The New Yorker about five years ago and "On Leaving The Bachelorette Lunch" from Poetry a couple of years back. If you're reading this buyer's review then you're probably already aware of Wetzsteon's formal adroitness. She's a votary of Auden and she's inherited some of her master's huge empathy, self deprecation and erudition. But unlike, say, the later work of Auden, she wears her learning as lightly as a summmer dress(the seasons are a theme she goes back to again and again in these gorgeous urban pastorals). More than any poems I know, this collection depicts a negotiation between the need for privacy (creative space?) and the need for intimacy. The tension makes for first-rate lyric drama. Sometimes Sakura Park reads like Sex and The City for the intellectually adventurous, heck, the intellectually uninhibited. It's very much a hypereducated thirty something's sentimental education. There are references to Wittgenstein and Weil which are simultaneously funny, respectful and seamlessly integrated into their respective poems. Many pieces smack of seriousness and wit:

"There is an inner motor known as lust
that makes a man of learning walk a mile
to gratify his raging senses, while
the woman he can talk to gathers dust.

A chilling vision of the years ahead
invades my thoughts, and widens like a stain:
a barren dance card and a teeming brain,
a crowded bookcase and an empty bed. from "Love and Work"

These poems are a perpetual coming to terms that we're lucky to eavesdrop on. Like good movies? I don't know of any poet who has been able to internalize the sensibility of the Sturges/Hawks/Cukor screwball comedienne like Wetzsteon has. Pauline Kael would be proud. If I have one quibble with the persona behind most of the poems, it's the x factor of social class. The poems depict the universe of The Upper West Side aesthete with refulgent beauty. In fact, the poet uses the phrase "my city" in different pieces. One wishes the poet/flaneuse would train her gaze on some of the meaner streets Baudelaire or , god help us, Eliot evoke. That being said, this is her best book yet. "Evening News", "Dachsund" "But For The Grace" and "Love and Work" are great poems. You will find yourself going back to these and works just as sprightly for their playfulness and wisdom.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An emotional wealth of romantic insights with respect to the meaning of love, life, truth and beauty, July 14, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sakura Park: Poems (Paperback)

Sakura Park showcases Rachel Wetzsteon's poetic style and talent as she invites the reader to share in an emotional wealth of romantic insights with respect to the meaning of love, life, truth and beauty. Pemberley: The park was very large. We drove/for some time through a beautiful wood/until the wood ceased, and the house came into view./Inside were miniatures, small faces/we gawked at until a housekeeper showed us/the maste's finer portrait in an upper room./I dredged up a shaming moment:/you asked me a question, then ducked as I spewed/an idiot's vitriol, blindness disguised as rage./The house stood well on rising ground, and beneath its slopes the thirsty couples/held their glasses high at Cafe Can't Wait./ I spent time at its flimsy tables/but then I walked under trees whose leaves/exhaled gusty stories of good deeds;/I learned empty houses are excellent teachers;/I sent you away and felt you grow/tremendous sin your absence. Ask me again.

5.0 out of 5 stars One Poetry Book, May 22, 2011

By 

J.D. - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Sakura Park: Poems (Paperback)

I love books but I have struggled to find poetry that I truly enjoy. Maybe Emily Dickinson. I don't have to make that effort with Rachel Wetzsteon's work. If you're thinking of owning one book of poetry, buy this one. The title poem still fascinates me and I've read countless times. It's not the only jewel in here. Great book!