Awe
by Dorothea Lasky (Goodreads author!)
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***
I am a dissenter and a blasphemer.
Just kidding, but I must diverge from the general consensus that seems to have surrounded this book in a buzzing, glowing bubble.
I'm not done with it yet, but so far I am only giving it 2 3/4 stars.
I do appreciate the risk taken by offering a collection that is a significant stylistic departure from a lot of contemporary poetry these days. However, this style is not my style and doesn't really resonate for me....more
***
I am a dissenter and a blasphemer.
Just kidding, but I must diverge from the general consensus that seems to have surrounded this book in a buzzing, glowing bubble.
I'm not done with it yet, but so far I am only giving it 2 3/4 stars.
I do appreciate the risk taken by offering a collection that is a significant stylistic departure from a lot of contemporary poetry these days. However, this style is not my style and doesn't really resonate for me....more
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18 comments
Read in February, 2008
recommended to Michelle by:
Monica Fambroughrecommends it for: My mom, Laura Solomon, Everyone, Poets
Basically, I want to make out with this book. I won't tell you that I have because that never happened, but I can't say that I haven't thought about it (unless I wanted to lie, then I could say that all I wanted).
I'll write a "real" review later, but here's a quickie: I love the mix of colloquial tone with elevated language, and even throwbacks like "O" and "!" which, Dottie, I usually can't stand. But you get away with it. I don't even think Thomas Lux gets awa...more
I'll write a "real" review later, but here's a quickie: I love the mix of colloquial tone with elevated language, and even throwbacks like "O" and "!" which, Dottie, I usually can't stand. But you get away with it. I don't even think Thomas Lux gets awa...more
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Read in April, 2008
Awe?
No.
Awful.
All the moving parts that make poetry so, well, moving have been cut away and stripped out of this work. I know Lasky is considered brilliant in some circles. She beats her readers over the head with her oh-so-superior intellect, her oh-so-spare and clever phrasing. ("Sweet Death!")
But I'm having none of it. All the soul, all the joy, all the music has been excised, leaving behind only a brittle, stylish shell.
I'm sure those who love this style of...more
No.
Awful.
All the moving parts that make poetry so, well, moving have been cut away and stripped out of this work. I know Lasky is considered brilliant in some circles. She beats her readers over the head with her oh-so-superior intellect, her oh-so-spare and clever phrasing. ("Sweet Death!")
But I'm having none of it. All the soul, all the joy, all the music has been excised, leaving behind only a brittle, stylish shell.
I'm sure those who love this style of...more
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(3 people liked it)
2 comments
I really loved this book. It's defintely one of my favorites of 2007. It's a terrific book with a focus on beauty. But not the ordinary way beauty is often written. This book is more like an out-of-control, wild kind of thing. Its themes are big: God, Love, the UNIVERSE. It's a book that lives in imagination. The thing I really liked about this book is that the poetry feels HONEST. Like, it's the kind of poetry I imagine the poet herself is continually surprised by. The kind of poetry that the p...more
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Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
anyone who loves blake and o'hara and h.d. and plath
So often I feel I am trying to read the poetry of peers and loving their presence and noticing what they are doing and I like it well enough but also kind of feel like I am supposed to like those whiskers pre-dyed into jeans and I hate the whiskers pre-dyed into jeans. Dorothea gets right at the bone with these elemental, Blakean contemporary poems. Her mind can withstand the sun, one might think, and bring it's noisy bright shingles into your mind too, or else, the sheer force of her will burn ...more
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Read in March, 2008
recommended to Samia by:
Cate
I think the first poem frames the book in a way that is hard for the rest to live up to. "I knew that somehow in the midst of this confusion/ Was the true dawning of myself./ My soul was a man and like a man/ I would wander forever..." The following poems continue by oscillating between a kind of grade school nursery rhyme (absent the darkness of a poet like Niedecker who flirts with a similar genre) and reflections on the sublime and its incarnations in modern life (mostly, though, ...more
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Read in July, 2007
Gorgeous poems that locate awe in the every day, that present stingingly true observations about love and, particularly, the peculiar power of female friendships, poems saturated with muscular imagery and starring birds, angels, the sun, and the color red. A poetry book so fleshy you could suggest it to die-hard prose readers and expect them to fare well, from an interesting and complicated mind.
Um, is it obvious that I loved it?
Ok, good. Please to read it.
Um, is it obvious that I loved it?
Ok, good. Please to read it.
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I can be fairly jealous when I read books by poets my own age whose work is fantastic. Maybe this makes me a bad person. But in Ms. Lasky's case, I was completely won over, and any feelings of "I want to be you" turned into, "I want to hang out with you." She's got humor and is completely guileless. It's wonderful. Plus, I think she's at least 6 months older than me...
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1 comments
I am uncertain about this book. There are a lot of "issues" in the book but the text is pretty straightforward, except for maybe a swear or two that make me wonder what the real issue is. I do however like Awe: a dialogue, a very eloquent poem. The one thing this book did help me do, was put modern poetry into perspective.
On second thought, there are a lot of strong & great images in these poems, especially Love Poem.
On second thought, there are a lot of strong & great images in these poems, especially Love Poem.
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One of the books of poetry I've most enjoyed of late. I think it's something about the tone--strong, yet whimsical, able to laugh at itself even in misery. Also very surreal. "The constellations all form in the shapes of rats/ And the world from above is blue and brown and slightly sweet smelling./ And inside God, the world of the heart rots and blooms."
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recommends it for:
those who find poetry on every person's brow.
I LOVE THIS BOOK!
I LOVE IT!
I LOVE IT!
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Read in July, 2007
Hear Dorothea Lasky read "The Process of Explication" from her book, AWE:
http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pen...
http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pen...
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2 comments
Still reading. But it's really, really, really good, and you should really, really, really buy it.
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the title says it all. this book. this book you have to read.
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One of the best first books of poems I've read in a good while.
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Read in September, 2007
Dottie's reading at the Writers House on Jan. 17 will soon be on PennSound...it left us all breathless. Check out my short review, forthcoming in Bitch magazine.
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Read in May, 2008
This book is clever, associative, imaginative, surreal. But there's something so informal, so off the cuff about it. I can't say it's not emotive but it's guarded too, and I can see the strengths of this poetry but somehow it's not for me.
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 4.31 (103 ratings) number of reviews: 26
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"I reached deep in you and pulled out a cardinal which in bright red flew out the window. "
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