The poems collected in this volume are taut, lyrical and informed by a powerful and subtle music. Working within the domain of consciously reduced elements, Paul Auster pushes language to its breaking point, locating the sayable within the shifting tumult of the real, and revealing a poetic voice that has been consistently faithful to its visionary impulses.
| ||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. Learn more. |
Book Description
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By A reader
Format:Paperback
First off, don't buy this - buy "Ground Work: Selected Poems and Essays, 1970-79" by Paul Auster. It contains everything this book contains to the letter, even typeset identically, but contains essays in addition.
This is extremely difficult poetry. Auster's poetry has been called "opaque", and in this respect does starkly contrast his prose fiction. It is extremely dense - Auster packs a lot into very few words, and so it takes time to extract meaning from it and one'll probably miss most of it. Sometimes it seems that there is no meaning, but this is something Auster might approve of. If you've read Auster's fiction, you can guess the sort of themes he's be interested in, but sometimes he is just stating things, rather than explaining the statements. The tautness of his poetry does not allow the exposition of his fiction.
If you get into it it's good to read, and less slow than at first, because of the atmostphere it evokes. For example, the first poem, "Spokes", evokes an atmosphere similar to the wasteland in T.S. Eliot's "What the thunder said". It takes time to get into it, like the time it takes to get used to reading Anglo-Saxon, Chaucer or latinate Milton.
You might find it worth it. You might not. Probably not, so try to read from someone else's copy to see if you like it. In any case, don't get this edition - get "Ground Work".
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars
2 reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A precise concise poetry of being where we know we are not
5 Nov 2006
By Shalom Freedman
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
These poems feel like poetry of a certain clear questioning existensial mind. They are precise and colored brightly. But after having read a long prose work of Auster's not long ago, I found them diminished things, not capable of giving anything like the context and complexity his prose can.
This too is a matter of understandibility. The language of prose we are told gives a clear surface meaning. The language of poetry is more resistant to this. And more the prose builds a narrative, and brings us characters and situations. The voice of the prose I am thinking of, 'The Brooklyn Follies' was clear and well- defined.
Here the abstract impersonal voice means we never quite know where we. Auster can make poetry of abstraction but the message tends to be one more of the no, no, nothing of things rather than their fullness in being. Nonetheless whether it is in finding 'consolation in colors' or in trying to remember himself ( lost in the wide world/ within me, and thereby to have known/ that in spite of myself / I am here. / As if this were the world..."
or in 'Facing the Music'
"where the air and earth erupt
in this profusion of chance, the random
forces of our own lack
of knowing what it is
we see, and merely to speak of it
is to see
how words fail us,how nothing comes right
in the saying of it, not even these words
I am moved to speak
in the name of this blue
and green
that vanish into the air
of summer.
Impossible
to hear it anymore. The tongue
is forever taking us away
from where we are, and nowhere
can we be at rest
in the things we are given
to see, for each word
is an elsewhere, a thing that moves
more quickly than the eye, even
as this sparrow moves, veering
into the air
in which it has no home. I believe, then
in nothing.....
these words might give you, and still
I can feel them
speaking through me.."
Auster defines a voice of his own wondering seeing and feeling, a voice which can too awaken the reader to some sense of the ' dearest freshness deep down things' sometimes.
This too is a matter of understandibility. The language of prose we are told gives a clear surface meaning. The language of poetry is more resistant to this. And more the prose builds a narrative, and brings us characters and situations. The voice of the prose I am thinking of, 'The Brooklyn Follies' was clear and well- defined.
Here the abstract impersonal voice means we never quite know where we. Auster can make poetry of abstraction but the message tends to be one more of the no, no, nothing of things rather than their fullness in being. Nonetheless whether it is in finding 'consolation in colors' or in trying to remember himself ( lost in the wide world/ within me, and thereby to have known/ that in spite of myself / I am here. / As if this were the world..."
or in 'Facing the Music'
"where the air and earth erupt
in this profusion of chance, the random
forces of our own lack
of knowing what it is
we see, and merely to speak of it
is to see
how words fail us,how nothing comes right
in the saying of it, not even these words
I am moved to speak
in the name of this blue
and green
that vanish into the air
of summer.
Impossible
to hear it anymore. The tongue
is forever taking us away
from where we are, and nowhere
can we be at rest
in the things we are given
to see, for each word
is an elsewhere, a thing that moves
more quickly than the eye, even
as this sparrow moves, veering
into the air
in which it has no home. I believe, then
in nothing.....
these words might give you, and still
I can feel them
speaking through me.."
Auster defines a voice of his own wondering seeing and feeling, a voice which can too awaken the reader to some sense of the ' dearest freshness deep down things' sometimes.
2 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
bloody sublime
26 Mar 2000
By lightningseed
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Dupin's poetry brings together fear and desire, death and life, oppositions which fuse together not out of juxtaposition but out of a bleeding neccesity for eachother. Death and life do not contrast in dupin, they are one. Opposing themselves within themselves, self rending and fusing simulataneously. Parageneous and sublime.
›
Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
