Lawn of Excluded Middle

by Rosmarie Waldrop

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Rosmarie Waldrop (born August 24, 1935), née Sebald, is a contemporary American poet, translator and publisher. Born in Germany, she has lived in the United States since 1958. She has lived in Providence, Rhode Island since the late 1960s. Waldrop is coeditor and publisher of Burning Deck Press, as well as the author or coauthor (as of 2006) of 17 books of poetry, two novels, and three books of criticism.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book was like tasting the language, swallowing phrases and memorizing them inside my head and craving for more...

Words too can be wrung from us like a cry from that space which doesn’t seem to be the body nor a metaphor curving into perspective. Rather the thickness silence gains when pressed. The ghosts of grammar veer toward shape while my hopes still lie embedded in a quiet myopia from which they don’t want to arise. The mistake is to look for explanations where we should just watch the slow fuse burning. Nerve of confession. What we let go we let go.
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It takes wrestling with my whole body for words on the tip of my tongue to be found later, disembodied, on paper.
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Why do we fear the dark as unavoidable defeat when it alone is constant, and we’d starve if it stopped watering the lawn of dreams.

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I worried about the gap between expression and intent, afraid the world might see a fluorescent advertisement where I meant to show a face."