The Time Traveler [Hardcover]

Joyce Carol Oates (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 1989

Poetry by the novelist

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the moving title sequence of this aggressively diverse collection, Oates's ( Invisible Woman ) presents Americans traveling in Eastern Europe, where "we are 'not ourselves.' / We are mimes, smilers, / objects of curiosity, / objects of much fawning solicitude / and much hatred." As a result, many poems here are more politically oriented than those in her six previous poetry books. There are also elegies for friends, poems about paintings. The lyrical character sketches of a section called "Young Love, America" are a delight, but the dramatic monologues of "I Saw a Woman Walking" might have been better served as fiction; exclamation points stud those overwritten pieces. "Don't bare your soul to anyone, no matter who invites it!" she exhorts a friend, then: "If you do it, don't talk about it! / Not even to yourself! / And don't write about it! / Especially not that!" Even in poems far less coy, Oates contents herself with merely nodding toward the intimate: "What's deepest / in you you can't name / except to know it's there." Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Oates has listened to the voices of contemporary culture and to her own traveler/poet's voice to shape this diverse, appealing collection of 70 poems. Giving particular emphasis to the role of women, she considers nature, art, history, relationships, and travel. Indeed, the image of the traveler is central: aware, knowing, and mildly cynical, this "time traveler" searches for broader connections with the world, wonders at its vastness, and ultimately persuades us that the small miracles she finds in herself and in her experiences are perhaps the only ones valid. This work will engage a variety of poetry readers and fans of the author's other works. Highly recommended.
- Jean Keleher, Wally Findlay Galleries Lib.,Chicago
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 131 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult (October 20, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525248021
• ISBN-13: 978-0525248026
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,299,525 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of more than 70 books, including novels, short story collections, poetry volumes, plays, essays, and criticism, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. Among her many honors are the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the National Book Award. Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent., February 18, 2004

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Time Traveler (Hardcover)

Joyce Carol Oates, The Time Traveler (Dutton, 1990)

As I've said, the defining feature of a work by Joyce Carol Oates (if there is a single defining feature) is its darkness, its relentless feeling of ominousness. Imagine my surprise, then, to come across the second section of The Time Traveler, which consists partially of ekphrastic poetry (poetry inspired by paintings or other works of art in a different medium) and partially of nature poems. It shook my foundations, not only because it's such a different style for Oates to be working in, but because the quality of the work is so high; one almost wonders, if this stuff is so good, what a piece of chick lit, or other unrelenting fluff, by Oates would read like.

The other three sections of the book are what one would expect from Oates, and subject to all the same picks and pans from my review of Women Whose Lives Are Food... (except that she stays away from the political more here; more gems, less naked political whining), but this second section is a whole other ballgame, and well worth the price of admission on its own. When Oates does the nature poetry thing, her work deserves comparison to that great yardstick of twentieth-century American nature poetry, Hayden Carruth, and it stands up well.

"Morning?--opaque
and dream-muddled.
And outside our windows
the snow is madly churned
as if by heraldic beasts--
not seven or eight starving deer,
all does."
("New Jersey White-Tailed Deer")

Absolutely lovely. It's stuff like this that makes reading poetry a pleasure. Would that there were more of it in the world. ****