Visible Signs: New and Selected Poems (Poets, Penguin) (Paperback)

by Lawrence Raab (Author) "Because so much consequential thinking happens in the rain..." (more)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Gathering work from five previous volumes with new poems, this selected shows film, landscape and art as recurring subjects for Raab, but only as vehicles to access the internal realm: "today, when I saw / how tenderly the light was moving among those trees / I thought of you." The earlier work here provides some relief from the general uniformity of the collection's plain style: Mysteries of the Horizon (1972) and Collectors of Cold Weather (1976) betray an early interest in surrealism, as well as a deep inheritance from Williams-style imagism. By 1987's Other Children, Raab has settled into the familiar poetic terrain of the first-person meditation; ruminations on the everyday world of walking the dog and watching the sleeping child dominate. His last two books, the National Book Award-nominated What We Don't Know About Each Other (1993) and Probable World (2000), continue in this vein: "You open the thermos of coffee. / It's Saturday. This is happiness, you think." The new poems are likewise concerned with the daily epiphany: One poem asserts, "How easily we can make ourselves sad/ just thinking. How little/ that buys us." But unlike Billy Collins's fairly thoroughgoing domestic optimism, Raab's sensibility is at heart resignedly and reluctantly dissatisfied: "Most of it/ is done already... yours/ is the same old life a thousand people/ had the good sense to keep to themselves." The work is not ambitious, but it is sincere and well-crafted, or, as one poem murmurs: "The studied poverty of small observations."
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From Booklist
Raab's poems are plainspoken, open in their cadences, conversational and confiding. They seem, at first read, to be rather modest and matter-of-fact, easygoing and affable. But just as still water runs deep, Raab's lyrics are actually quietly intent poems of inquiry into both the state and the sense of being. Often humorous, always radiant, they perfectly capture the persistent inner voice that provides a play-by-play account of one's life, the self-consciousness that makes one aware of one's own awareness, and the strange facet of the psyche that makes us crave escape from ourselves, leading to the habit of fantasy and the hunger for art and entertainment. In a set of 21 vivid, provocative new poems, as well as stellar selections from five previous collections, including the superb What We Don't Know about Each Other (1993) and The Probable World (2000), Raab draws on the revelations of science, the grace of music, and the magic of movies to elucidate nature's beauty and mystery, the haunting presence of absent loved ones, and the ongoing amazement of being alive. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (March 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142002690
• ISBN-13: 978-0142002698
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
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• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,158,567 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)