Post by shayepoet on Oct 31, 2008 20:32:56 GMT 2
Burn and Dodge
Sharon Dolin
Winner of the 2007 AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry, Burn and Dodge is a collection of poems that burns with contemporary vices such as: Guilt, Envy, Regret, and Indecision while also dodging such concerns with formal playfulness.
Sample poem:
Regret
Here's another sin you're sunk within
owl-necked looking back
to where you might have been
or what you could have done
to keep you from the muck
you're stuck standing in.
The lover not kissed the one
you seem to miss
this tree not the one you want to see or shinny
you can't believe this skintight is your skin.
The road not taken was always
the one worth trying. But you didn't
think so back then only now
in constant replay
while you're stewing out here
on the highway thumbing
for your life.
*****
*****
Raves and reviews for Burn and Dodge:
"Burn and Dodge is an apt title for this book. Dolin's poems adroitly move in and out of shadow, shed light, contrast or blend as the context demands. The need to measure is strong in these poems, to examine how we live within the constraints of our emotions and how they get the better of us. Her language is lithe and motored, her meanings channeled by her formal devotions, without ever being reduced to mere accoutrements of form. She writes at the edge of compression, with such pop to her lines that I'm reminded of Auden's definition of poetry-'memorable speech."
--Bob Hicok
"Sharon Dolin dons her seven-league boots and leaps confidently over our small fenced-in territories (formalism, L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E, blahblahblah), picking from these gardens as she chooses, and devising wily new recipes of her own."
--Albert Goldbarth
"Sharon Dolin moves between tradition and innovation with dazzling agility, speed, and grace. 'By fire. By stammering. Stoning. By water.' Her poems hook us with their candor and wit. While many are meditations on guilt, regret, and doubt, this work has an innate optimism-a restorative quality-that encourages us to lust for lust, hope for / hoping' and 'awaken each day, wanting / to want."
--Elaine Equi
About the author:
Sharon Dolin is the author of three previous poetry collections: Realm of the Possible; Serious Pink; and Heart Work, as well as five poetry chapbooks. She has been Poet-in-Residence at Eugene Lang College at The New School for Liberal Arts. Presently, Dolin also teaches at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York City, where she directs The Center for Book Arts Annual Letterpress Poetry Chapbook Competition and is a curator for the Broadsides Reading Series.
ISBN-10: 0-8229-6005-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-6005-8, 120 pages, $14.00
Pitt Poetry Series
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008
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