Love and its Derangements: poems

by Joyce Carol Oates

Book by Oates, Joyce Carol

Genres: Poetry

60 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1970

About the author

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000), and her short story collections The Wheel of Love (1970) and Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (2014) were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel Them (1969), two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize (2019).
Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014, and is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing. From 2016 to 2020, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught short fiction in the spring semesters. She now teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Oates was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2016.
Pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.

Reviews

[nicole mag · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.7/5

I picked this up at the library because the title is just up my alley and it was short. That same night I finished it because the way Oates writes is brief and to the point, but the point isn’t so obvious if you know what I mean. She gives beautiful images to describe aspects of love. Breath, eyes, movement, placement, tastes, etc. She uses these abstract things to talk about something so simple like diving into water and it’s very romantic and lovely. If you don’t listen to a lot of music like that or read poetry like that, then I can see how the meanings would be hard to decipher but you just have to imagine it really and it becomes so clear like you can touch it. I promise. Anyway, great poetry book!

[Nicolas · Rating 3 out of 5]

As always, some of these landed more solidly than others. I particularly liked "Sleeping Together."

We discussed all things Joyce Carol Oates in this episode of the All the Books Show Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/allthebooks/ep...

[Rick Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rich with visual prose. It is easy to see why she is an icon when it comes to literature and poetry. I could read these again, and always notice something new.