Spinoza Doesn't Come Here Anymore

by Colette Inez

One of NYC's most popular poets issues "The work of a lifetime".

In the vanguard of contemporary poetry since the 1970’s, Colette Inez’s unique and thoroughly original voice is an important contribution to American Poetry. She has been praised by poet laureate Stanley Kuntiz—"I like the hard contents of her poems, the anger and the fine control"—and Anne Sexton, who said Inez’s work gave her "that kind of pain/pleasure one gets from the real thing."

Her latest collection combines her wild sense of fun with wide-ranging erudition, in a book that is both a love letter to New York City and to the great tradition of the Enlightenment. SPINOZA DOESN'T COME HERE ANY MORE shows Inez at the peak of her talents, in a stunning tour-de-force that may be the most impassioned yet controlled work of her illustrious career. The collection shows her voice to be as vivacious, smart, and fiery as ever, now with a seasoned wisdom and compassion that's absolutely beguiling. It is, in short, the work of a lifetime.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alas -- the title had such promise, but it was the best line of the book, and I was not enthralled by the actual content. Inez studies the everyday in contemporary New York by setting it in formal structure (this book did remind me to play with the pandoun again).

[Altan · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a luminous and intense collection of poems. I adored them.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Colette Inez has been pulling off poetry like this, amalgams of shock and formalism that somehow break set the nervous system jigging, for decades now. The very title piece is an exemplary case, combining mystical Jewish philosophy out of the heart of the Renaissance with a New York street map wise to the immigrant shifts of the last ten years. And at any moment a key line or couplet can throbs with the secret heartbeat of iamb and trochee. Inez also never fails to pick up the trail of blood a life in the arts can leave behind: the child never had, the friend lost along a Long Island highway, the family for which there was never room enough. This collection spent months rattling around the halls of my own writing faculty, spurring me again and again to burn with better insight, to punch with more knuckles. The woman ought to be famous by now.

[Melville House Publishing · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Innovative, varied, sharp-edged . . . [a writer of] substantial achievement." — The New York Times