Tantalus in Love: Poems [Hardcover]

Alan Shapiro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 7, 2005

Kingsley Tufts Award winner Alan Shapiro is at his most passionate in this new collection full of life, jealousy, lust, and romantic abandon.

Tantalus in Love begins with the disintegration of a marriage, with anger and suspicion. But from sorrow Shapiro moves to celebrate the resilience of love after loss, and the awakening glory of an amorous middle age. In "Invocation" he writes, "Love . . . let there be never again / a moment in which / your sudden shining isn't / sudden." These poems yearn with hesitant love, heated at renewal, fragile but intensified by past experience of love’s evanescence and uncertainty. "Iris / love flower of the middle-aged . . . the stalk / bends under the unexpected weight . . . how did I ever live without you?" Tantalus in Love reinvents myth and symbol in lyrical portraits of astounding resonance, illuminating this defining vulnerability of humanity.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

If love is the province of poets, slow, grinding breakups are usually novelist's territory. The figure of Tantalus takes the form of a husband, who, after 20 years of marriage, admires his wife as she rises before him in the morning and "knows he'll never touch her again." These autobiographical poems, which refer to events covered in Shapiro's Song and Dance (the death of his brother) and After the Digging (the death of his sister), remember joys, express daily care for children as things come apart, turn over past grievances, and project infinite future grief. The presiding spirit is Robert Lowell at his chiseled best, but Shapiro has something, too, of Frost's grim depersonalization. If Shapiro doesn't quite hit his own pitch perfectly, as he did in Song and Dance, he takes well-wrought stock of a disappearing relation. The title poem, about the unbearable uncertainty of his wife's fidelity, is like listening in, unbearably, on the nearly mute Richard Gere character from Unfaithful as Diane Lane dresses before him. (Apr.)
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Review

"Poet Alan Shapiro again dazzles us with his linguistic layups." --Dannye Romine Powell Charlotte Observer

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (April 7, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618452427
• ISBN-13: 978-0618452422
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,636,094 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another great reflection on tragedy by Shapiro, September 21, 2006

By 

Robert Pratte (charleston, il USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tantalus in Love: Poems (Hardcover)

I must confess, I'm not much of a fan of confessional style poetry. Yet, Shapiro has consistently, to my mind, produced great collections in this style. In Song and Dance, he grappled with those big issues of love, life, and death alongside the smaller ones of how to retain personal memories of a sibling, qualify his own coming of age, and ultimately deal with the grief that accompanied his loss. When I read it, I found it an excellent collection of poems.

So what of Tantalus in Love? Here Shapiro addresses the estrangement in his marriage, divorce, jealousy, and finally the possibility of finding love again and driving those old memories away. As a whole, it is ultimately a sort of quest that ends in his own personal redemption, with the demons of his past tragedies (loss of parents, siblings, and marriage) finally cast out.

Once again, Shapiro has produced a fine collection of poems that present a coherent whole while remaining enjoyable and powerful on their own.