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Coeur de Lion
by
Ariana Reines (Goodreads Author)
Now that I am not addressing you But the “you” of poetry I am probably doing something horrible and destructive.
But this “I” is the I of poetry And it should be able to do more than I can do.
Just a few months after the publication of her prize-winning, instant classic debutThe Cow, Ariana Reines self-published this stunning book-length poem, now a cult object among readers
...morePaperback, 108 pages
Published
March 14th 2008
by Mal-O-Mar
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I DEVOURED this book as soon as I pulled it out of the POBox! LUCKILY I didn't have to go to my stupid job and could sit in the park and READ READ READ IT with all the pain and pleasure it deserves having when read!
So many unexpected FREAKISH, BEAUTIFUL moments it's hard to put a finger to it. Here's one particular moment (JUST WHEN sex in poems was getting redundant and boring THIS SUCH STANZA):
I did it a few
Times when I was
Eighteen. My hole
Is j...more
So many unexpected FREAKISH, BEAUTIFUL moments it's hard to put a finger to it. Here's one particular moment (JUST WHEN sex in poems was getting redundant and boring THIS SUCH STANZA):
I did it a few
Times when I was
Eighteen. My hole
Is j...more
Ana
rated it
Recommends it for:
anyone who ever thought contemporary poetry was unexciting. read it and weep
Ariana Reines wrote the best book of the year, and 2009 will have to work hard to top this, and hell, most other years too. Coeur de Lion isn't just 'great,' it's Great. Read it, talk about it, spread the word!
I liked this much more than "The Cow." The self-consciousness, while still present, is to a lesser and more productive degree. "Coeur de Lion" is basically about a love affair gone awry between the poet and one "Jake". It takes us through the poet's graduate school in Europe and some time in New York. She is poor and she and Jake have a lot of non-vanilla sex and she goes through his email account and pisses him off. Both have other lovers at home while they are in ...more
A single long poem or a series of poems with no discernible boundaries, about a love affair. The book is coversational, but urgent, the words tumble over each other desperately so that suddenly you look up and you've read forty pages.
"Ariana" pines after and also kind of disdains and also kind of loathes and also kind of tenderly cares for her love object, "Jake", who has been writing emails to "Emma", a girl who is clever but simple, pretty, infinitel...more
"Ariana" pines after and also kind of disdains and also kind of loathes and also kind of tenderly cares for her love object, "Jake", who has been writing emails to "Emma", a girl who is clever but simple, pretty, infinitel...more
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Voice? I felt like she was sitting talking to me. To borrow a word from one of my favorite sources; "Unbestopable!"
I’ve been reading Ariana Reines lately. I am a regular-ish listener to Michael Silverblatt’s Bookworm show and it was there I discovered Ariana Reines. (Listen to the show www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw/bw080424ari... Ms. Reines gives a killer reading, though there is a fair amount of ‘bleeping’ - f*cking FCC!) Her latest work, the slender but whollup-packing “Coeur de Lion” amazes and delights and saddens and everything else, unfurling much like a Chinese Scroll Painting- linear in composition, b...more
This book is colossal even though it is a slim volume of lyric poetry.
e.g. -
"Where is the "you" of You/ Tube."
--
"Arthur Rimbaud"
--
"When I am straddling you, you/ Say this ridiculous thing, Mamma /
Llama."
really really colossally intellectually painfully tangibly believably superlatively fantastically good.
e.g. -
"Where is the "you" of You/ Tube."
--
"Arthur Rimbaud"
--
"When I am straddling you, you/ Say this ridiculous thing, Mamma /
Llama."
really really colossally intellectually painfully tangibly believably superlatively fantastically good.
William Gass calls the sentence a unit of consciousness, and the sentences here, splintered into lines of verse, navigate between self-analysis, self-pity, self-revelation, self-delusion. Maybe one of life's fundamental conflicts is between the way you know yourself to be, and the way others see you?
Of course, that's the province of the love poem and the love song: the accusatory, needful *I* and the hateful, beloved *You*
COEUR DE LION seems like both an embodiment and ...more
Of course, that's the province of the love poem and the love song: the accusatory, needful *I* and the hateful, beloved *You*
COEUR DE LION seems like both an embodiment and ...more
I loved this.
At times, I felt like some kind of a voyeur reading it--but not a voyeur of sleaze; more like a voyeur of open authenticity.
There are lots of parts I like. Here is one of them:
The words on a page
In an open book
Looked stupid to
Me when I was little
Unless I was right up close
To them. They looked
Weak; barely
There.
It made me nervous
That in order
For words on a page
To have power
I ...more
At times, I felt like some kind of a voyeur reading it--but not a voyeur of sleaze; more like a voyeur of open authenticity.
There are lots of parts I like. Here is one of them:
The words on a page
In an open book
Looked stupid to
Me when I was little
Unless I was right up close
To them. They looked
Weak; barely
There.
It made me nervous
That in order
For words on a page
To have power
I ...more
I read this in one day - that's how gripping & essential it is. Written in a style that is compelling, addictive, direct; Reines is both clumsy and graceful, and the poem has a catalytic effect. How anyone can write such truthful lines despite the cynicism such knowledge should inculcate is beyond me. For anyone looking for proof that there is such a thing as a love poetry that replicates the experience of pangs of lost desire: that wounds & turns in the gut and doesn't lie despite the high fict...more
Gobbled it. Will be digesting ad infinitum.
i moaned.
Coeur de Lion is an enchantment, a curse, a beautiful book by a writer with talent coming out of her the way regular people, us regular people, would sweat on a hot day: it's like she doesn't even have to try. Coeur de Lion is a wheel of ripe and smelly cheese, an epistolary enchantment from and to that jigsawed into my sub-sub life. "Not your enormous feelings, but their representation." What better representation than this.
...I was sick of thinking
About you this morning but
I was listening to Bob Dylan and Leonard
Cohen in order to think about
You for literary purposes.
When I feel nothing for a person
I get scared I'm losing my humanity
And that turning cold means
My heart's been botoxed; we're
All fucked.
--p. 84
About you this morning but
I was listening to Bob Dylan and Leonard
Cohen in order to think about
You for literary purposes.
When I feel nothing for a person
I get scared I'm losing my humanity
And that turning cold means
My heart's been botoxed; we're
All fucked.
--p. 84
First reading: 4/22/08
Notes upon rereading (11/01/09):
This text really does destroy, and it's incredible how there is a potent balance of sentimentality and textual commentary that each undermines the other and creates a new sort of hybrid that works, well, perfectly.
Notes upon rereading (11/01/09):
This text really does destroy, and it's incredible how there is a potent balance of sentimentality and textual commentary that each undermines the other and creates a new sort of hybrid that works, well, perfectly.
I read this poem while traveling through Wyoming on a cross-country trip. The content couldn't have been more in conflict with the setting and I liked that. Coeur de Lion is an insanely readable poem; it reads like a hipster's lineated (but well-crafted!) livejournal.
Not as ambitious as THE COW (which I loved), but infinitely valuable as a contemporary epistolary poem. The closing was brilliant. Many lovely bits about words/language and the startling and sneaky ways we employ them in love letters.
it also makes me uncomfortable when people cut out American Aparell advertisements and pin them to their walls.
I pretty much devoured this book.
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Ariana Reines is the author of The Cow (Alberta Prize, FenceBooks: 2006), Coeur de Lion (Mal-O-Mar: 2007; Fence: 2011), and MERCURY (Fence: forthcoming fall 2011), plus the LP/audiobook SAVE THE WORLD starring Lili Taylor (Fence: forthcoming spring 2011).
Volumes of translation include My Heart Laid Bare by Charles Baudelaire, (Mal-O-Mar:2009), The Little Black Book of Grisélidis Réal...more
More about Ariana Reines...
Volumes of translation include My Heart Laid Bare by Charles Baudelaire, (Mal-O-Mar:2009), The Little Black Book of Grisélidis Réal...more
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