Post by shayepoet on Aug 30, 2008 21:58:19 GMT 2
Until Crazy Catches Me
Ellen Rachlin
"What if Daphne had gotten away? Facing, even pursuing, what she flees, Ellen Rachlin keeps her balance while shuttling between distance and intimacy. Her style is nimble and nervy; her persona lucid, cryptic, whimsical, courageous, and fleet. She has an eye for detours, kinship with netherworlds, radar for the uncanny. Until Crazy Catches Me introduces a poet whose manner is, by turns, deceptively candid and clearly ambiguous..."
–Phillis Levin
Sample poem:
Fire
A hurt that doesn't pierce the skin
lets a spark spread within.
Fire marks its core
and thinking can't put it out.
It burns on lie and speck of truth
and through any cloak of will
you might use to smolder it.
It burns with perfect memory;
little else seems true. Even after,
you are captive to its residue
Praise for Until Crazy Catches Me:
"What if Daphne had gotten away? Facing, even pursuing, what she flees, Ellen Rachlin
keeps her balance while shuttling between distance and intimacy. Her style is nimble
and nervy; her persona lucid, cryptic, whimsical, courageous, and fleet. She has an eye
for detours, kinship with netherworlds, radar for the uncanny. Until Crazy Catches Me
introduces a poet whose manner is, by turns, deceptively candid and clearly ambiguous.
Yet among the dangers and pleasures and mysteries, the glimpse most bittersweet
is a pile of lemons ‘dumpling-shaped / with soft pits and shadows’ – a tribute to homegrown
sensuous truth, a memory so lush it perfumes the present, ripening our sense of
the future. Here we feel and see how the act of dwelling – an art of surrender – elicits
transformation.”
–Phillis Levin, author of May Day
“In Until Crazy Catches Me, Ellen Rachlin imparts her unique take on the things of
this world – where the philosophical is rooted in the concrete and where the need
for distance is constantly undercut by a desire for proximity. These dueling tendencies
play out against Rachlin’s vast canvas, from a domestic childhood scene of canning
tomatoes with a grandfather in the Adirondacks to an adult scenario where the speaker
observes a beloved swimming out to sea off Corsica. Rachlin establishes her distinct
voice throughout these well-wrought, linguistically engaging poems.”
–Elise Paschen, author of Infidelities
“Ellen Rachlin’s new collection explores the themes of stasis and change, freedom and
commitment, in poems that turn such abstractions into vibrant metaphors. This proverbially
slim book is one that rewards the reader with the richness of its theme and the
variety of its accomplishments.”
–Charles Martin, author of Starting from Sleep
“There’s something wonderfully quirky about the poems that comprise Ellen Rachlin’s
first collection Until Crazy Catches Me. It is as if she is looking at the world out of the
corner of her eye. Ordinary objects and landscapes seem suddenly brilliant and suffused
with meaning and resonance we had never considered. The result is lasting and
enormously satisfying.”
–Marjory Wentworth, author of Despite Gravity
About the author:
Ellen Rachlin is the author of Until Crazy Catches Me (Antrim House Books), a chapbook, Waiting for Here, (Finishing Line Press) and the forthcoming chapbook, Captive to Residue, from Flarestack Publishing. Her poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies including American Poetry Review, Confrontation, The Comstock Review and Court Green. She received her M.F.A. from Antioch College. Ms. Rachlin serves as Treasurer of The Poetry Society of America and works in finance.
ISBN 978-0-9798451-5-4, 56 pages, $14.00
Antrim House Books
5.5" x 8.5, perfect bound
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www.antrimhousebooks.com/rachlin.html