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Loading... Imaginary Vesselsby Paisley Rekdal
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. The ambition of this collection didn't strike me until three-quarters of the way through the text. Rekdal's fourth section of the book, "Shooting the Skulls: A Wartime Devotional," is a fascinating blend of the inspiration of excavation, bringing memory into conversation with the imagined voices of catalogued but nameless bones. Her second part, "Go West," too, shows an impressive display of poetic form and capturing a diversity of perspectives on Mae West. "Imaginary Vessels" brings to light the meaning we imbue in artifacts and what they can also draw out of the individual regardless of their location in place or history. no reviews | add a review
Awards
""Compelling, appealing, cinematic. Rekdal refreshes the meaning and the image of being displaced in this world." -The Boston Globe "Rekdal's work deeply satisfies, for it witnesses and wonders over the necessary struggles of human awareness and being." -Rain Taxi "In acknowledging the disappointing facts of our existence and singing her way into its amazement, she has created poetry that lives alongside the misery we sometimes witness-and sometimes cause." -Slate Paisley Rekdal questions how identity and being inhabit metaphorical and personified "vessels," from blown glass and soap bubbles to skulls unearthed at the Colorado State Mental Institution. Whether writing short lyrics or a sonnet sequence celebrating Mae West, Rekdal's intellectually inquisitive and carefully researched poems delight in sound, meter, and head-on engagement. Illustrated with twelve Andrea Modica photographs. From "You're": Vague as fog and turnip-hipped, a creel of eels that slithers in stains. Dirty slate, you're Diamond Lil. She's you, you say. You're her. She's I. O Mae, fifth grade, we dressed in feathers and our mothers' slit pink slips, dipped into your schema and your accent, aspiring (like you) to be able to order coffee and have it sound like filth. Paisley Rekdal is the author of four books of poetry, a book of personal essays, and a mixed media book of photography, poetry, fiction and non-fiction. She lives in Salt Lake City and teaches at the University of Utah"-- No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)811.54Literature English (North America) American poetry 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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