Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems 2004-2006 [Hardcover]

Adrienne Rich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 2007

A new volume from Adrienne Rich, recipient of the National Book Foundation's 2006 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth is one of Adrienne Rich's most unpredictable and evocative collections. In the folk/blues tradition behind "Rhyme," in the incantatory pattern of "Behind the Motel," in the voices from past and present in "Letters Censored, Shredded, Returned to Sender or Judged Unfit to Send," in the dystopic scenes and intimate encounters of "Draft # 2006," in the mysterious negotiations of the title poem, the tempos and moods of this book constantly vary. Here, Rich draws on the artistic means of a lifetime.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rich, who won the Yale Younger Poets prize in 1951 and who has published more than 25 books since, continues, in this unsparing collection, to make inquiries into real injustice and fables of its vanquishment: loose floorboards quitting in haste we pried/ up to secrete the rash imagination/ of a time to come. The penchant that this great American poet has for dating her books and her individual poems feels less like an attempt to situate them within history than a means to shock the self, and readers, into recognizing what has passed, and is passing: smolder's legacy on a boulder traced. Rich's stark, intimate voice seems to speak for a life lived at once at the margins and at the center. Some poems linger in diaristic dailiness (My neighbor moving/ in a doorframe moment's/ reach of her hand); others light out for the territory where possibilities are extinguished, and born: beyond remorse, disillusion, fear of death// or life/ rage/ for order, rage for destruction//—beyond this love which stirs/ the air every time she walks into the room. (Oct.)
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Review

“Here are blues refrains, improvisations, and the sound of birdsong. Mixed in with poems about prison life, about torture, about Wallace Stevens, it forms a potent volume.” (Sunday Star Ledger ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (October 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393065650
• ISBN-13: 978-0393065657
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,138,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hidden Jewels (and maybe hidden depths), January 23, 2008

By 

Robert Szarka (Norwich, CT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems 2004-2006 (Hardcover)

The poems here are more elliptical than Rich's early work with which I'm most familiar. Some are so dense as to be impenetrable, while others read like scattered fragments swept together into a jumble. In most, though, there's a phrase or two that shines out like a jewel. I suspect that their more hidden charms will become apparent on re-reading...

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Adrienne Rich does it again., June 1, 2008

By 

C. Keyes (Marblehead, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems 2004-2006 (Hardcover)

Adrienne Rich---now in her late seventies---gives us another terrific book of poems dated 2004-2006. She returns to writing some formal verses, but free verse now seems her most natural form. She even tries some translations. This book is most interesting when she takes us effortlessly, it seems,from the personal to the political.