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Radial Symmetry
Katherine Larson is the winner of the 2010 Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition. With Radial Symmetry, she has created a transcendent body of poems that flourish in the liminal spaces that separate scientific inquiry from empathic knowledge, astute observation from sublime witness. Larson's inventive lyrics lead the reader through vertiginous landscapes—geographical, p...more
Paperback, 96 pages
Published
April 26th 2011
by Yale University Press
(first published April 15th 2011)
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The most simplistic definition of radial symmetry is “the beauty of circles,” which is exactly what this collection presents: various facets of life, though a great deal of them have to do with trips to an ocean alongside the desert (Mexico?) for vacations or to study the wildlife (Larson is a biologist). She describes the beauty of such creatures with radial symmetry, those both alive and dead. Larson ever contrastts life and death, beauty and pain. In one poem she compares calls the fragmentin...more
I have to give this book full score, even if I haven't read all of it yet. The opening poem is in itself worth at least 6 stars:
The late cranes throwing
their necks to the wind stay
somewhere between
the place that rain begins
and the place that it ends
they seem to exist just there
above the horizon at least
I only see them that way
tossed up
against the gray October
light not heavy enough
for feet to be useful or
useless enough to make
gravity untie its string. I’m sick
of this stubbornness
but the earthworm...more
The late cranes throwing
their necks to the wind stay
somewhere between
the place that rain begins
and the place that it ends
they seem to exist just there
above the horizon at least
I only see them that way
tossed up
against the gray October
light not heavy enough
for feet to be useful or
useless enough to make
gravity untie its string. I’m sick
of this stubbornness
but the earthworm...more
There's a wonderful, smart introduction to this book by Louise Gluck, about, other things, beauty in contemporary poetry. Beauty is hugely, hugely important to me, and Gluck talks about why poets and readers often shy away from it (in part because it really inspires silence, rather than discourse, as a response). Anyway, Radial Symmetry is very, very beautiful, and this is one of the qualities that I loved best about it and that made it such a joy to read. It's also concerned with the enormous t...more
So this was on the "to-read" shelf for over a year, and after plowing through it last night I recall why. I read/study the poem "Statuary" in several classes every year, and it kinda blows my mind. It's the first poem in this collection, which I hoped would be full of similarly dazzling poems, and none of the other poems are its equal. Only two in fact--"Love at Thirty-Two Degrees" and "Risk"--are even in contention. Larson's no one-hit wonder, many of these poems are strong, but it starts on su...more
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Not really a fan of quoting the whole collection in the introduction, but Glück is exact where she is not citational. I love how varied the poems are, and—due to Larson's steady voice—how unified. Her poise, the rich fauna, and the multiple spaces that strangely coexist in her poems, that is somehow
Dark Hours
, minus the city. Impressive debut.
Prose just cannot stir the soul like poetry. My dog-eared Rumi and coffee-stained Elizabeth Bishop never leave my nightstand. So what an utter delight to be introduced to the young poet Katherine Larson(by D., a charming, brown-eyed, soulful poet himself). Larson captures the wretched and sublime of life with the eye of a biologist and the heart of a poet. There is a delight on every page. Read this now.
Just got it in the mail yesterday-- even the cover is exciting!! Four or five outstanding poems, v. good moments/images in many of them... Makes me wish I were studying biology or... something else.
5/5
been waiting for this book since the issue of Poetry in 2006 when Love at 32 Degrees was published. didn't disappoint.
been waiting for this book since the issue of Poetry in 2006 when Love at 32 Degrees was published. didn't disappoint.
lovely new book of poetry--Larson uses imagery from science and travel (particularly marine environments) to create enigmatic scenes of loss, destruction, and intimacy.
Absolutely beautiful poetry, you can see why she won the Yale Younger Poets series.
Such an exciting first collection--I keep learning new ways to fall in love with it.
I'd give it a 3.5, if I could. Some really lovely poems here.
Apr 12, 2013
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Award winning artist who sold her first painting when she was fourteen years old.
Previously lived in Phoenix, Arizona and currently resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
More about Katherine Larson...
Previously lived in Phoenix, Arizona and currently resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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