Voice-Over [Paperback]

Elaine Equi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1998

Synthesizing twenty years of influencess, Equi constructs a collage of voices--undoubtedly American, exquisitely her own.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Like the New York School poets, Equi finds her art within the contradictions and chance encounters of urban life: "He was made/ to do nothing/ but lean against/ tall buildings./ A somber/ exclamation point,/ eating an apple?/ turning it slowly/ into ballet," she writes in "Armani Weather." Elsewhere, Equi can be found enthusing about anything from fennel to a fedora, seemingly aiming for the frisson of low-high cultural collision: "Shocking Pink! Pagan Pink!/ Milk of Magnesia and Panther Pink." But unlike New York Schoolers Joe Brainard and Frank O'Hara, Equi is writing in an era that entirely sanctions such poetic effusions. Still, despite a bit too much kitsch, Voice-Over retains the generous, sometimes sophisticated humor that pervaded the poetry of her idols, adapting their unabashed sentimentality ("Doesn't it seem wonderfully optimistic when someone you hardly know signs a note 'Love'?") and even channelling her master's voice in "Monologue: Frank O'Hara." Perhaps the most noticable change from earlier books like Surface Tension is a growing preoccupation with growing older (in the voice of Lorine Niedecker: "Hair almost all gray now?// Eyebrows are the last/ to show age and the eyes never") and with a pervasive numbness where "the world is diluted." If such sentiments sometimes make for less than satisfying reading, they also show the poet struggling with "this sense of eternity/ however brief?."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

New York poet Equi delights us with another volume of good-humored poems, written in her vivacious style. Equi's is a strongly contemporary voice, steeped in the sounds and spirit of her times, her fingers soundly on the pulse of her generation. Yet her poetry shows few hints of despair or alienation; she challenges and surprises with her spritely use of language. In the freshly, fiercely feminine poem "Beauty Secret" she writes, "It must be/ like losing your/ fear of death/ to just stop/ worrying about/ what you look like?" and "From my mother/ I learned to fear beauty/ the lack of it/ and from my father/ to distrust it." Equi writes crisply, with short (sometimes one-word) lines that accentuate the forcefulness and sureness of these poems. She is not one to mince words, for, as she says, "In poems we shine,/ and though we say them with conviction,/ the words are never really ours for keeps." Recommended for contemporary poetry collections.?Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Coffee House Press; First Edition edition (February 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566890780
• ISBN-13: 978-1566890786
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,986,246 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:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightfully intelligent; the poem "made new", June 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Voice-Over (Paperback)

I have been a follower and fan of Elaine Equi's work for some time, and her new collection VOICE-OVER is her best to date. I whole-heartily recommend this beautifully crafted, balanced, intelligent and mysterious collection of poetry. VOICE-OVER begins with an epigraph from Bakhtin, "...[O]ne must take the word and make it one's own." Indeed the word, the poem, is reinvented, reconstrued, reconstructed, as Pound says, "made new" in Equi's wonderfully contemporary epigrams. This collection is an ars poetica: The sun sets./ The vase rests/ in the center/ of the poem. Equi draws poetry out of the minutia of everyday life, and it is that which makes this collection so fresh; who would guess where poems lurk for this fine poet. I laughed with delight when reading "Armani Weather" and "Remorse After Shopping." This is one collection I will return to again and again.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best poets writing, Elaine Equi full of wisdom, May 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Voice-Over (Paperback)

Elaine Equi's book starts with a quotation from Bakhtin about the personal intention in all art, and I find her book filled with that particular tilt. She has thre accuracy of a very draughtsman, the parrticularity that Fairfield Porter praised. Each of her poems seems as distinct as a political demand, and yet her unifiy-ing "personalism" is all over these Voice-overs. Her scale is no more small than Dickinson, and any true reader willbe amazed at how she economically dynbamizes space. She has learneds from many poets, and is a learned poet, but all this learnig is worn lightly. Take a poem like Little Landscape, where that phrase is immediately juxtaposed with "always at breast," so that, like a painting by the mythical Elstir, we do not know whether we dealing with body or landscape, but both, as in the ending: "The shadow pours itself/out on the grass." I find her poems erotic, maximal, surprising, and all with a reticence and charm that is supple and alive. Poetry of Equi is challenging, because it avoids l)mawkish melodrama 2)mawkish anti-sentimental mere "zaum" 3)moderate nothingness. She is subtle as a new reconstructivist and is an influence already on many. I lilke her total commitment to a very difficult art of precision, poignant precisions.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightfully intelligent; the poem "made new", June 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Voice-Over (Paperback)

I have been a follower and fan of Elaine Equi's work for some time, and her new collection VOICE-OVER is her best to date. I whole-heartily recommend this beautifully crafted, balanced, intelligent and mysterious collection of poetry. VOICE-OVER begins with an epigraph from Bakhtin, "...[O]ne must take the word and make it one's own." Indeed the word, the poem, is reinvented, reconstrued, reconstructed, as Pound says, "made new" in Equi's wonderfully contemporary epigrams. This collection is an ars poetica: The sun sets./ The vase rests/ in the center/ of the poem. Equi draws poetry out of the minutia of everyday life, and it is that which makes this collection so fresh; who would guess where poems lurk for this fine poet. I laughed with delight when reading "Armani Weather" and "Remorse After Shopping." This is one collection I will return to again and again.