When a Woman Loves a Man: Poems [Paperback]

David Lehman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 5, 2005

These poems capture the romance, irony, and pathos of love; they movingly chronicle days in post-9/11 New York and bring a fresh perspective to an array of subjects -- from the Brooklyn Bridge to Gertrude Stein to Buddhism. When a Woman Loves a Man is playful, inventive, and as amusing as it is clever; it is the work of a poet at the height of his lyrical and reflective powers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lehman's latest amply demonstrates his formal and prosodic range as well as his unstinting loyalty to the tones, predispositions, prejudices and forms of the New York School of poets, particularly Ashbery, O'Hara and Koch. The autobiographical "Wittgenstein's Ladder," "In Freud's House" and "The Code of Napoleon" are distinctive, Mel Brooks–like summations of their subjects, foregrounding Lehman's strengths as a writer—his humor, compact and direct syntax and easy musicality—simply by presenting them through the prism of historical subject matter: "He's the shortest man in the room, the only one who thinks / He is Adolf Hitler. Everyone else is Napoleon." "Jew You" features a litany of slanders gut-wrenching in their pain and humor, and it ends on a nice twist: "...and when Lionel Trilling asked Allen Ginsberg why he, a fellow Jew, / had written 'fuck the Jews' in his dorm room window, / Ginsberg sighed: 'It's very complicated.' Now there was a Jew." Lehman cannot "take wing" the way his hero-poets did in the '50s not only because he lacks the spirit of the enigma – the Surrealist aspect of New York School hijinks eludes him – but simply because he doesn't seem to like his time very much. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Very few writers can actually shape how you see the world. David Lehman is such a writer. His poetry rides the currents of the zeitgeist in ways that are deeply influential. And if you let him alter you, he confers something like peace upon you, for in Lehman the darkest moments are always a beat away from laughter and the lightest things are always going dark around the edges. What strange and profound comfort that is. When a Woman Loves a Man is a truly important collection."

-- Robert Olen Butler, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

"In David Lehman's poem 'A History of Modern Poetry,' he writes, 'the idea was to have a voice of your own, / distinctive, sounding like nobody else's / The result was that everybody sounded alike.' This may well be true, but Lehman's 'everybody' voice still sounds uniquely his: wisecracking but resonant with the pleasures of poetry."

-- John Ashbery

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; Original edition (April 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743255941
• ISBN-13: 978-0743255943
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,694,673 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Radical Play, July 5, 2005

By 

T. P. Winch - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When a Woman Loves a Man: Poems (Paperback)

Central to Lehman's work is a radical playfulness, an essential ingredient of great poetry. He is one of the U.S.'s most inventive writers, particularly in his use of traditional and sui generis forms. Plus, he is funny, which,in a literary world where often only deadly seriousness will win you any respect, can sometimes be a strike against a poet. Read "The Gift," "Wittgenstein's Ladder," "Psalm," "Six Almonds," and "The James Brothers" to see what I mean. Since John Ashbery revitalized the sestina with his "Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape," included in his 1970 book The Double Dream of Spring, sestinas have become all the rage. Lehman is one of the most accomplished practitioners of this exacting form, as the brilliant "Big Hair" and "Sestina," from this new colection, demonstrate. This is Lehman's best book of poems.