Free Downloads Stay, Illusion: Poems
National Book Award Finalist Stay, Illusion, the much-anticipated volume of poems by Lucie Brock-Broido, illuminates the broken but beautiful world she inhabits. Her poems are lit with magic and stark with truth: whether they speak from the imagined dwelling of her “Abandonarium,” or from habitats where animals are farmed and harmed “humanely,” or even from the surreal confines of death row, they find a voice like no other—dazzling, intimate, startling, heartbreaking. Eddying between the theater of the lavish and the enigmatic, between the gaudy and the unadorned, Brock-Broido’s verse scours America for material to render unflinchingly the here and now. Grandeur devolves into a comic irony: “We have come to terms with our Self / Like a marmoset getting out of her Great Ape suit.” She dares the unexplained: “The wings were left ajar / At the altar where I’ve knelt all night, trembling, leaning, rough / As sugar raw, and sweet.” Each poem is a rebellious chain of words: “Be good, they said, and so too I was / Good until I was not.” Strange narratives, interior and exterior, make a world that is foreign and yet our own; like Dickinson, Brock-Broido constructs a spider-sibling, commanding the “silk spool of the recluse as she confects her eventual mythomania.” And why create the web? Because: “If it is written down, you can’t rescind it.”
Paperback: 112 pages
Publisher: Knopf (March 3, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307962032
ISBN-13: 978-0307962034
Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.4 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #703,757 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #126 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Themes & Styles > Death, Grief & Loss #340 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Love Poems #540 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Women Authors
Stay, Illusion is Lucie Brock-Broido's latest collection of poetry. Here, we see the devastatingly beautiful mind of one of America's most gifted, lyrical and enchanting poets. Her gift of poetry and her depth of awareness is evident in each page of this brilliant and stunning collection. The elegy--an ancient and powerful form--is transformed by Lucie's pen and we as readers could never have imagined something more beautiful and poignant.Perhaps her greatest book in a career of amazing heights and firsts. Stay, Illusion is nominated for the National Book Award and may soon be the winner. All the best to Lucie and I am grateful to have a copy of this book in my hands. All true lovers of poetry must read these poems!
I found this collection of poetry overly rife with clever wordplay. I wanted to feel moved &/or informed by something. It's the same for me with the visual arts. After a point, verbal wit serves only to decorate, in contrast to providing a meaningful experience.Take the line, "Whatever suffering is insufferable is punishable by perishable," from Dove, Interrupted.I'm not typically one to compare writers, but I'm going to make an exception here as I just finished reading two incredibly moving collections: "Remnants of Another Age," by Nikola Madzirov, and "The Descent," by Sophie Cabot Black.Here's a slice from Sophie Cabot Black's poem, "Lost": I am still here between the sun/That rises and the one that sets. To remain/Or go on. Which means to talk ...No wordplay here. Just travels straight to my heart. And of course this is subjective.And yet ...
Excellent and fascinating use of language, thought, imagery. Highly recommend for anyone interested in modern poetics. Not recommended for those who prefer poems easily paraphrased into prose.
Frilly, vapid, and self-involved, these poems are, at best, light verse delivered in a portentous voice. There is a sameness to them --reflexively ornamental, with little of substance for an American reader and lover of poetry in the 21st century. Not much meat on these bones. One wonders for whom the writer is composing these. Perhaps best read in a whispery, dramatic voice in front of a mirror.
This book broke my heart into a million pieces. After reading it and re-reading it and re-reading it, I bought the rest of her books, too.
I like to read her poems because they are mystical and exotic. Very interesting to read when you are also an animal lover.
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