way: a poem

by Leslie Scalapino

Leslie Scalapino's WAY represents, in the words of one critic, "a refusal to limit the potential of experience." Animals, events, gestures are examined, shuffled, monitored, creating a multilayered poem whose constant shifts and pluralities lay bare the latent sexual and social tensions that are rarely permitted expression. With relentless , exacting attention to the multiplicities contained in seemingly everyday observations-a policeman's glance , a woman in a theater taking a hat from a man's head-Scalapino proves herself a master at confronting the cerebral manifestations of obsession and alienation. Poetry.

Genres: Poetry

148 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Leslie Scalapino (July 25, 1944 – May 28, 2010) was a United States poet, experimental prose writer, playwright, essayist, and editor, sometimes grouped in with the Language poets, though she felt closely tied to the Beat poets. A longtime resident of California's Bay Area, she earned an M.A. in English from the University of California at Berkeley. One of Scalapino's most critically well-received works is way (North Point Press, 1988), a long poem which won the Poetry Center Award, the Lawrence Lipton Prize, and the American Book Award.

Scalapino was born in Santa Barbara, California and raised in Berkeley. She traveled throughout her youth and adulthood to Asia, Africa and Europe and her writing was intensely influenced by these experiences. In childhood Scalapino traveled with her father Robert A. Scalapino (founder of UC Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies), her mother, and her two sisters (Diane and Lynne). She attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon and received her B.A. in Literature in 1966 before moving on to earn her M.A. at UC Berkeley. Scalapino published her first book O and Other Poems in 1976. During her lifetime, she published more than thirty books of poetry, prose, inter-genre fiction, plays, essays, and collaborations. Other well-known works of hers include The Return of Painting, The Pearl, and Orion : A Trilogy (North Point, 1991; Talisman, 1997), Dahlia's Iris: Secret Autobiography and Fiction (FC2), Sight (a collaboration with Lyn Hejinian; Edge Books), and Zither & Autobiography (Wesleyan University Press).

Scalapino's poetry has been widely anthologized, including appearances in the influential Postmodern American Poetry, From the Other Side of the Century, and Poems for the Millennium anthologies, as well as the popular Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize series anthologies. Her work was the subject of a special "critical feature" appearing in an issue of the online poetry journal How2.

From 1986 until 2010, Scalapino ran the Oakland small press she founded, O Books. Scalapino taught writing at various institutions, including 16 years in the MFA program at Bard College. Other schools she taught at over the years included Mills College, the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts, San Francisco State University, UC San Diego, and Naropa University.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Joe]

One thing I'm realizing about Scalapino is that sure you can start by saying this book is about so and so conception RE: the function of time, the incommensurability of subjectivities and the status of the subject/object but that doesn't matter. It's what follows. Lily pads!

[Colette]

I am not even close to being smart enough to understand wtf if going on in this book.

English223 will actually honestly kill me I think. 😅

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you get a chance to see Konrad Steiner's 13 minute film of an excerpt from this book, (Noh) Way, rush to the independent theater. Using Iraq war footage and beautifully coincident with Scalapino's always fabulous phrasing as a reader of her work, it is one of the best poetry films I've ever seen.

[Camille Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The following is an essay about the work of Leslie Scalapino, in which I discuss this and other books of hers:
Reading the Minds of Events: Leslie Scalapino’s Plural Time

[Sam M]

"though there is not a way / to be worn out"

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

her.

[H · Rating 4 out of 5]

“the attitude of/ in a setting/ aging and dying at/ some time”

[Stephen Kirbach]

there's this one too, of course...

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

This "long poem" had its moments for me, "bum series" in particular, but I had trouble getting past the calculated flatness of the work. A good read nonetheless.