Rumor

Elizabeth Robinson

Description

Robinson’s ambition in Rumor is enormous—to understand the problem of violence, to understand how power subjugates bodies and souls and turns them to use. In the world these poems inhabit, language itself is a violent power tool, a buzzsaw, precise, ruthless, and often wrong. Yet language’s instability allows Robinson to turn it on itself to question categories such as gender. Through brooding, bloody, clearwater analysis, through delicate, brutally uncertain self-questioning, Robinson’s poems create a frictive warmth that’s not comfortable, but rousing. —Catherine Wagner
Elizabeth Robinson has long been probing the interplay of the personal with the abstract or, as she has put it, “the brick floor from which the/ kingdom of God extends/ or could extend.” In Rumor, the poet-victim (whom “grief evicts” from herself) tries to take on the persona of perpetrator as if it were a sanctuary from which to explore and understand the violence: “she lies a divided pronoun /. . . / knife slicing through softened self/. . . / She/ crouches over/ herself, a difficult/ situation.” The poems worry at boundaries between subject/object, male/female/ transgender, but most of all between “abstract” violence and the physical (“the teacher/ flayed by removal from/ the student”). This process of incarnation, of word made flesh is frightening, nauseating, but must be faced: “we cough up words made of flesh/ and eat them anew.” Here “I myself/ had no face, but took/ to smiling” and “wrapped my hand around my incomprehension.” Rumor is fascinating, daunting, complex. Its exploration remains open, does not pretend to find answers, but instead offers memorable words: “How firmly the answer closes its eyes.” —Rosmarie Waldrop

Informations

• Publié par: Parlor Press, LLC
• Date de parution: 19 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781602351547
• Langue: English

Extrait

Robinson Rumor Parlor Press

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Elizabeth Robinson

Free Verse Edîtîons Edîted by Jon Tompson

Rumor

Elizabeth Robinson

Parlor Press Anderson, South Carolina www.parlorpress.com

Paror Press C, Anderson, Sout Caroîna, 29621

© 2018 by Paror Press A rîgts reserved. Prînted în te Unîted States o Amerîca S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9

îbrary o Congress Cataogîng-în-Pubîcatîon Data on Fîe

978-1-60235-153-0 (paperback) 978-1-60235-154-7 (PDF) 978-1-60235-155-4 (ePub)

2 3 4 5

Cover desîgn by Davîd Bakesey. Cover îmage: auren Mcïntos. Used by permîssîon Prînted on acîd-ree paper. Paror Press, C îs an îndependent pubîser o scoary and trade tîtes în prînt and mutîmedîa ormats. hîs book îs avaîabe în paperback and ebook ormats rom Paror Press on te Word Wîde Web at ttp://www.parorpress.com or troug onîne and brîck-and-mortar bookstores. For submîssîon înormatîon or to Ind out about Paror Press pubîcatîons, wrîte to Paror Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drîve, Anderson, Sout Caroîna, 29621, or emaî edîtor@parorpress.com.

For Craig Watson

Contents

ïntroductîon îx Fes 3

1. he One Bîg Secret 7 he New Vocatîon 8 Teescope 10 Wrînke 12 Orrery 13 ess, No ess 15 Rumor 16

2. hîs ïdea 19 Aternate Account 21 Strangers, or te Sîmutaneous 23 Jugge 26 he Boy Says 28 Extempore 34

3. Pîer 37 Bîtter 39 Cuprît, Vîctîm, Crîme, Capture 40 Met 41 Annas 43 Saîd te Supposed Autor o A hîngs 44

vîî