Temper (Pitt Poetry Series) [Paperback]

Beth Bachmann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 28, 2009 | Series: Pitt Poetry Series

Temper is at once violent and controlled, unflinching and unforgiving in temperament. The poems are mercilessly recursive, placing pressure on the lyric as a mode of both the elegiac and the ecstatic. The result is an enforced silence, urgent with grief.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The difficulties of making art about violence might have churned the poems into melodrama or diffused them into abstraction, but Bachmann’s temperate approach yields work that is eerily calm and anything but bloodless. Tough and impressive, ‘Temper’ leaves its mark.”

—The Georgia Review

"Here we have metamorphosis, resonance, transfromation, the alchemy of art. Bachmann is able by a few simple direct gestures . . . to connect her personal grief and tragedy to the whole tradition of English (and Western) verse and to the poetic impulse itself to make beauty out of sorrow."
—Poetry

“A thorough and vivid emotional narrative, taking the reader to an unsettling depth of personal tragedy at breakneck speed.”
—Oxford American

“In her lush economies, psychic darkness, and imperative forthrightness, Bachmann is clearly an heir of Louise Glück  and there’s a trace of Whitman here, too . . .  The grief in ‘Temper’ is raw, relentless, and unadorned; in the crucible of Bachmann’s sensibility, this sorry becomes gracious force.”
—On the Seawall

 

“An often haunting image of time juttering forward and back ceaselessly, lives never completely explained or tragedy never finally understood.”
—Heavy Bear

“Nothing short of a stunning debut. Rarely have I felt so compelled by a collection, so utterly incapable of turning away. “
—Poet Lore

“Bachmann is able—by a few simple, direct gestures toward pastoral elegy, invoking nymphs and shepherds by rejecting them—to connect her personal grief and tragedy to the whole tradition of English (and Western) verse and to the poetic impulse itself to make beauty out of sorrow.”
—Poetry

 

About the Author

Beth Bachmann teaches creative writing at Vanderbilt University. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, and Tin House, among others. Bachmann's work has been honored with a grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission and has been anthologized in Alice Redux and Best New Poets 2005 and 2007.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press; 1 edition (August 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822960400
• ISBN-13: 978-0822960409
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 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: #698,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Beth Bachmann's first book, Temper, was selected by Lynn Emanuel as winner of the AWP Award Series 2008 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry and won the 2010 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her poems appear in American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Southern Review, and Tin House, among other journals, and have been anthologized in Alice Redux: New Stories of Alice, Lewis and Wonderland and Best New Poets 2005 and 2007. She holds graduate degrees from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and Concordia University in Montreal and teaches creative writing at Vanderbilt University. www.bethbachmann.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars harrowing and beautiful, September 17, 2009

By 

O'Biquody - See all my reviews

This review is from: Temper (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

We are all moved by tragedy and the drama surrounding it. We slow down to witness car accidents and it seems as though most forms of popular entertainment these days are homicide-based genres, whether in television or movies. Poetry deals with death using the elegiac form. I have never read an elegiac work like Temper. Written in dedication to Bachmann's sister, whose unsolved murder is the basis for the trauma underlying these poems, this book has redefined elegy for me.

Temper does not follow the careworn methodology of typical elegies - to guide the reader into the history and experiences of the victim and bystanders (often the author and family/friends) and to find a way to make sense of a loss. Bachmann does indeed take the reader by the hand, but Temper's aim seems not to be to create a metaphorical framework for resolution, but to push past the comfortable boundaries of empathy, leading the reader into very uncomfortable territories. With an amazing skill at manipulating images and lyrical voices and with her own powerful new voice, Bachmann's poetry explores the darkness and horror that truly surrounds homicide.

Temper begins with an almost narrative first section that unflinchingly explores the setting, victims and perpetrator. The second and third sections then transcend the biographical to push further into the relationships between predators and victims, with continuing motifs of power, responsibility and accusal. To me, reframing and recontextualizing these subjects outside of biography was an unexpected and brilliant stroke preventing egress for reader from these uncomfortable subjects, as Bachmann renders them.

Because of the complex image systems throughout the work, I find Temper highly cinematic in character. But not in a 'Tuesdays with Morrie' modality where heartbreaking empathy generates inspirational pathos, perhaps what Lovejoy often refers to as "metaphysical pathos". Nor in the mode of popular homicide dramas in which the viewer is often let off the hook: the bad guys get caught, someone is punished, hope springs from the tragedy, etc. Temper doesn't let you off the hook. Temper is the anti-'Law and Order' more after the fashion of a David Lynch or Guy Maddin film, where violence and trauma don't stroke our empathy or sympathies but shock and horrify us in a way that is sometimes, and embarrassingly, beautiful and fascinating.

But we learn real truths from the discomforting works in Temper - dark truths about violence and its consequences on survivors, families and the community. I think there is a kind of resolution to be found in Temper, but it is the kind of sober resolution you get by daring to look into the eyes of your persecutor and confront the mysteries that lie between you.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely amazing!, April 15, 2010

By 

Margaret E. Ready "Smartcookie" (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Temper (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

I officially love this book, it's hauntingly beautiful with striking imagery that left me breathless. I like that Bachmann's poetry is easy to understand while still showing intelligence and her own unique point of view. At times heartbreaking I could not have asked for a better collection of poetry!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Temper, September 23, 2009

By 

R. B. Johnson - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Temper (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

I am reading Temper these days. It's unimaginably wonderful and very powerful. I just love it. It's the best book of poetry I can remember reading, ever. Seriously. It's worth far more than the price of admission. As an elegy it is such an endless gesture of love.