Awe (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Most notable in this slim debut is Lasky's recurring and refreshingly un-ironic awe of God, the soul and the spirit. Amid Brazilian bikini waxes, cheating lovers and trips to the 7-Eleven, Lasky negotiates a young woman's world with true belief: Save me O Lord.../ Save me from abuse and wisdom and red hot sin. Lasky deftly handles holy subjects in an unholy, and yet never disrespectful, manner. As well, she is rather adept at topics that could lend themselves to melodrama into affecting reading, as in the 10-part prose poem, Ten Lives in Mental Illness, in which subjects such as anorexia and panic attacks are broached with a fluidity and grace. Unfortunately, uncompelling dream images and tired stream-of-consciousness musings bog down much of this work. In one poem, Lasky wonders, Maybe I will never have a baby/ No, that can't be true, out my womb/ the tiny babies of the universe will explode. In the end it is Lasky's relationship to her God that inspires her best and makes this a surprising and worthwhile read: To the fire in his heart and the fire in God/ That makes the whole world/ Thump in a beating music, heartbeats and mountains/ that makes the bluebird in the tree. (Sept.)
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Product Description

If the book of Revelations had been scribbled in the diary of a precocious fourteen-year-old girl, the prophecies might look something like Awe. Dorothea Lasky is a daring truth-teller, naming names and boldly pushing the boundaries of confession. The secrets she tells are truths we recognize in ourselves: "Be scared of yourself / The real self / Is very scary."

Dorothea Lasky was born in St. Louis in 1978. She is the author of several chapbooks and has attended Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: Wave Books (September 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933517247
• ISBN-13: 978-1933517247
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #451,242 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Summery" and disturbing in the best ways, December 8, 2007

By	John Gallaher "[e-mail]" (Maryville, MO) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

AWE reminds me a bit of Gertrude Stein (Lifting Belly, especially), in the way the elemental repetitions teeter at the liminal space between innocence and obsession. It's an ambivalent space, catching the tone of perception, twisted through a precocious lens. It's captivating. Lasky has the most disturbingly innocent voice in contemporary poetry.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awe, September 6, 2007

By	Noah Eli Gordon (United States) - See all my reviews

With equal parts fierce psychological inquiry, sexual sublimity, and doubt-laden reverence, Dorothea Lasky's poems embody the authoritative force of antiquity, rescuing our current preoccupation with theoretical discourse from its fear of the mirror, and identity politics from its imprisonment therein. Openendedly allegorical and unabashedly social, one hears in Awe "the utterances we emit when we are truly listening." That they sound like no one else and yet say something wholly original about love is the joy of this debut collection's simultaneous strength and willingness to surrender.