The Sleep of Reason (Phoenix Poets) [Hardcover]

David Gewanter (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226289737 | ISBN-13: 978-0226289731 | Publication Date: October 18, 2003 | Edition: 1

The Sleep of Reason plunges us into a macabre world where good impulses bring on evil consequences—a world not unlike our own. In David Gewanter's alternately delightful and startling poems, allegory comes alive and stalks a bookstore's musty aisles, comedians eviscerate their families for a laugh, lovers love each other for withholding affection, and theaters collapse on audiences hungry for spectacle. Amidst such surreal subjects, Gewanter's delicate musicality and keen sense of humor sparkle; his inquisition regarding a fallen world becomes a dark comedy of errors haunted by the most unexpected characters—from JFK Jr. to Tacitus, Redd Foxx to General Motors, Mariah Carey to 100 rabbits with herpes. An offbeat satire for an off-kilter age, The Sleep of Reason offers an incisive guide to moral behavior in an immoral world.

(20050201)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a wry, arch, self-consciously Eliotic voice, Gewanter attempts in this second collection to chart a vexed moral universe: "Daily I am told/ to love my neighbor-but huddled/ inside my love is a loathing for his filthy life." Socially conscious lyrics that pick up from Robert Lowell (Gewanter was the co-editor of the recently released Lowell Collected) juxtapose the classical with the contemporary: Bill Clinton comes on as Catullus; a Parkinson's patient is called "Mr. Circe." General Motors, Hitler, Charles Atlas and John F. Kennedy Jr. appear in the book's second half. The harm/help binarism is mined relentlessly: animal rights activists free diseased rabbits; Quakers hunt whales for God. Throughout, a Lowell-like visceral force contends with a tendency toward cleverness ("Is Cassius Clay?"). "Chai 1924-2000,"an elegy for the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, can't quite forgo that archness, ruminating on "Your name, in the macaroni/ of tongues, Ah-me-hide,/ foreign and sentimental// as the pendant Chai-life-/ noosing the ancients of St. Pete/ waiting for the Early Bird Special/ ...Drop the page,/ come out. Come out." Yet the overall impression that the book leaves is of a seriousness and rigor in trying to find a means to moral clarity; even if it sometimes seems "scrawled/ onto Vanna's body," it is, finally, "a love letter/ charge/ of piety."
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Review

"In a wry, arch, self-consciously Eliotic voice, Gewanter attempts in this second collection to chart a vexed moral universe. Socially conscious lyrics that pick up from Robert Lowell juxtapose the classical with the contemporary. Yet the overall impression that the book leaves is of a seriousness and rigor in trying to find a means to moral clarity."

(Publishers Weekly )

"The Sleep of Reason is a strong collection from a writer who seems to possess that most curious and necessary of literary attributes--a moral vision."

(New York Times Book Review )

"The poems . . . are unapologetically eclectic and intellectual, yet never inaccessible. Gewanter tempers his scholarship with humor and irony, a combination which produces some truly beautiful results."

(Kathleen Rooney Harvard Review )

"Gewanter''s stunned clarity, his sense of poetry''s ethical possibilities, goes beyond the fragile comic pleasure of his poems."

(Brian Phillips Poetry )

Author honored in Whiting Foundation Writer’s Awards, Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation

(Whiting Foundation Writer's Awards )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 72 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (October 18, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226289737
• ISBN-13: 978-0226289731
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,505,587 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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