| Reading Novalis in Montana Contributor(s): Kwasny, Melissa (Author) |
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ISBN: 1571314296 ISBN-13: 9781571314291 Publisher: Milkweed Editions OUR PRICE: $14.40 Product Type: Paperback Published: January 2009 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Poetry | American - General - Poetry | Subjects & Themes - Nature - Poetry | Subjects & Themes - Places |
| Dewey: 811.54 |
| LCCN: 2008017064 |
| Physical Information: 0.4" H x 6.5" W x 8.8" (0.30 lbs) 96 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Drawing inspiration from Novalis (1772-1801) a poet who, like the other adherents of early German Romanticism, believed in the correspondence between inner and outer worlds, Kwasny divines the palpable and ineffable ways in which inherited traditions--indigenous culture, mythology, romanticism, modernism, surrealism, postmodernism, and more--inform daily life. Finding inspiration in the mountain West, Kwasny weaves a shimmering web of connections. Reading Novalis in Montana stretches boundaries with a section of "reading poems"--poems in dialogue with romantic and modernist poets, including Ezra Pound, H.D., Novalis, Dickinson, as well as a sequence that is a twenty-first century take on "The Wasteland," included with stunning lyric poems. Using luxuriant syntax to string together conditional clauses, these poems throw the reader backward and forward within a line and a poem. Alternatively, repetition offers a commentary on meaning, chopping perception into fragments. Combined with a charming self-qualification that deliberately interrupts momentum, this work smartly ties the reader back down to earth. Throughout details of lived experience emerge--hiking through the Pacific Northwest, helping a friend deal with cancer, sorting through the ruins of a relationship --and yet the interior voice is always tuned to the physical world, envisioning the shared understanding that connects all life. |