Trace Elements [Paperback]

Barbara Jordan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1998

The poet Barbara Jordan, whose first book, Channel, was the winner of the 1989 Barnard New Women Poets Prize, has won acclaim for her ability to interweave the strands of religion, nature, language, and art in work which shimmers with stylistic elegance. Her second book, Trace Elements, explores residues of meaning and mystery--of history, belief systems, old categories of classification--from a place of abandonment or skepticism. What can we know? How do we order knowledge? What are twentieth-century versions of the Fall? These are some of the questions this new collection addresses, in richly textured poems whose form blend freedom and restraint, and whose language has, in the words of Robert Pinsky, "the impact of saturated colors: consonants and vowels in lush cadences, luxuriance of image and phrase."

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

"Ammonites," the long, satisfying poem that concludes Jordan's second collection, traces the relationship between memorabilia and art, between relics of life and life itself. An ammonite is a type of coiled fossil, recalling, for this poet, Goethe's house, near which she bought one from a woman who was selling them on the street, and also recalling a chapel in which Latin prayers are lettered in human bone. And if the fossil's name also brings to mind the name of well-known poet A.R. Ammons, who like Jordan resides in upstate New York and is drawn into natural forms as territory for the mind's wanderings, perhaps it is no accident: "Elemental/mixtures of form: the narcissi, the snow,/ my fingers with their unprecedented whorls?variations/ in the matter." Although Jordan's artistic strategy is to humanize the world by weaving a web of connections, she is not deceived into a grandiose vision: "there are no symbols in the world, only things/ we tend." And while there are no fireworks in these quiet, mindful poems, there is much that is human and deeply considered. Jordan's first book, Channel (Beacon, 1990), was a winner of the "Barnard New Poets" series. Recommended for most poetry collections.?Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York
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From Kirkus Reviews

A previous winner of the Barnard Prize, and currently an English prof (the University of Rochester), Jordan offers a second volume (after Channel, 1990) thats serious and somber and relies on an intellectually compelling dialectic of the abstract and the natural. Jordans unsettling metaphysics leads to abrupt line shifts and edgy phrases: Her poems begin with debristhe trace elements of the titleand end wondering what the difference is between trash and keepsake. The known, referential world is simply a hall of exits (Dinosaur Calendar); and Roman ruins, the shells in Goethes house, animal remainsall yield no meaning, just an indifference of things. Many of the weary poems here record the world after the Fall, the loss of faith and certainty; and imagine a prelapsarian idyll before knowledge and perspective differentiated objects with names (Anchorites). Poems such as The Cult of Solitude and Spectrum announce Jordan's loneliness and escape from the world, her admiration for a contemplative life in which silence widens into exile. Keeping vigil with discontent, Jordan pierces the veil of debris (O) in poems that are always smart, and sometimes prophetic. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books (March 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140265317
• ISBN-13: 978-0140265316
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,403,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Barbara Jordan: poetry of sublime, October 27, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Trace Elements (Paperback)

Barbara Jordan does what no one else has done before. Her poetry is a door ajar to the beauty and the mystery of what we know but have forgotten. Elegiac wisdom, a symphony of unseen, her poetry makes the deepest, the most wondorous discoveries. This is a very major poet. We need her words as we need air, water and bread. TRACE ELEMENTS is one of the most important books I've read in this decade. I bow my head. Bravo!

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful, June 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Trace Elements (Paperback)

This is a great book of poetry. Prof Jordan's work is insightful and gives this reader that smile of ah-hah that only Mary Oliver and Lisel Mueller have thus far accomplished.