Post by shayepoet on Oct 23, 2008 7:23:40 GMT 2
Crazy Jane
Pat Falk
"Pat Falk's work seamlessly bridges poetic landscapes often thought at odds:
free verse and narrative, the confessional and the sociopolitical, the interrogative sensibility of the avant-gardist
and the musical ear of the of the lyricist. Crazy Jane sings to us while simultaneously disrupting the flow; the poems manage to dislodge us from complacency, not through an outer violence, but through a quiet, though raging, inner sense of desperation. Such urgency is difficult to capture, and Falk does so.
A truly unique and honest voice in American poetry."
--Wheelhouse Magazine
Sample poem:
Crazy Jane
For too long I have carried
you inside me, color and substance
of lead, burden of darkness and dawn.
Now morning cracks the sky,
pulls clouds asunder,
topples every unrelenting Oak.
Stones break open--render
seed, scatter, sow and spit out life.
It happens as I speak.
It happens as I thrust
my hand into my heart and demand
your blessing.
Praise and reviews for Crazy Jane:
Pat Falk’s poems implicitly ask, how does one find center, stability, sanity and love? The urgency behind the processing of one’s personal autonomy ironically means addressing the “Crazy Janes” within, the voices one has been conditioned into sensing as one’s own, voices of hungers, “twisted instincts,” hurts, frustrations, unrealized abilities, and narcissistic voices seeking cameras to assuage the suffering: “am I so much the child/that I believe whatever blazes, dazzles,/is so utterly my own—that I deny my own/perception..?”
--Gayl Teller, Hofstra University (Full Review)
"Pat Falk is a writer of insight and skill. Her title is ironic--because this poet is anything but crazy, and that is the point. Falk is playing on the idea of the poet seer--who sees the world so clearly that others caught in the madness of their cultures cannot see. Falk's poems offer true wisdom."
--Daniela Gioseffi, National Book Critics Circle
About the author:
Pat Falk, an award winning poet, teaches writing, literature and women's studies at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York. She was educated at the City University of New York, and publishes poetry, memoir, essays and reviews. Her research is focused on feminist poetics, interdisciplinary approaches to writing, the confluence of poetry and politics, and human rights. She's listed in Poets & Writers Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers, NCC's Speaker's Bureau, and is a frequent reader and workshop leader in the New York tri-state area. She's the author of the collections of poetry, In the Shape of a Woman and Crazy Jane; edited the anthology Sightings: Poems on Discovery, and the literary memoir, It Happens As We Speak: A Feminist Poetics.
www.patfalk.net
ISBN 1-891386-55-7, 95 pages, $14.95
Plain View Press, 2008
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Plain View Press: tinyurl.com/63btbh