From Publishers Weekly
Andrews' sixth book consists entirely of frank, charming, short, and very readable prose poems. The first and best describe girlhood and growing up; most of the rest describe erotic attachment, romantic longing, lust and sex. Andrews has made these topics her special field (her best-known prior work is The Book of Orgasms), and readers who go in search of them will find plenty: "a lady with 27 orgasms," she argues, "would have to be a ravaging sort," especially since "the penis, I've determined, should never be overrated." A lighthearted concluding sequence takes up American ideas of France, spinning variations on its big words (such as jouissance), its sophistication, and its lovers' allure. A feminist comedian of the sexual body, Andrews is also a sincere poet of regret: "all those lies trapped inside us like a silent movie we'd keep on living in just as long as we could." More sophisticated readers who find her poems of adulthood less than surprising may nonetheless be moved by the recollections and inventions in which Andrews presents tableaux of youth: "I wanted to be Elizabeth.... What if I was?" she remembers asking. "What if I was given the wrong name? And now Elizabeth was living my life, dreaming my dreams, wearing my things."
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Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Product Description
Nin Andrews starts from the premise that life on Earth is suffering, and that a large part of daily life and art is a search for an escape from this essential truth. Much of her writing is about the wish for an escape. In her previous collection, The Book of Orgasms, the voices are like those of angels, who look down from above and wonder: what is the problem with the human race? Why are they so troubled?
The prose poems in her new collection, Sleeping with Houdini, are more personal. Andrews begins by speaking as a little girl who wishes she could vanish at will or become invisible to the outer world, just as Houdini did. As she grows up, so does her imagination. Houdini becomes a personal icon of a magical being, a muse, and ultimate lover, or that which one can long for but never possess or become. Sleeping with Houdini is a kind of "inscape" of a girl's life, an inside look at her fantasies and fears, her wishes and dreams, a collection in which Houdini becomes a metaphor for her longing.
"Though her prose poems read as plausible narrative, Andrews fluently infiltrates the logical with the surreal. Her unique and playful vision presents a world off-kilter and disjointed where the reader strangely feels right at home."
–Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics
The prose poems in her new collection, Sleeping with Houdini, are more personal. Andrews begins by speaking as a little girl who wishes she could vanish at will or become invisible to the outer world, just as Houdini did. As she grows up, so does her imagination. Houdini becomes a personal icon of a magical being, a muse, and ultimate lover, or that which one can long for but never possess or become. Sleeping with Houdini is a kind of "inscape" of a girl's life, an inside look at her fantasies and fears, her wishes and dreams, a collection in which Houdini becomes a metaphor for her longing.
"Though her prose poems read as plausible narrative, Andrews fluently infiltrates the logical with the surreal. Her unique and playful vision presents a world off-kilter and disjointed where the reader strangely feels right at home."
–Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics
