Awake (Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary) - Softcover

Laux, Dorianne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887485731 ISBN 13: 9780887485732

Publisher: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Awake, Dorianne Laux's first book of poetry, is introduced by Pulitzer Prize winner and U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine for a reason: It's a near-perfect, emotionally haunting book―one which follows a narrative trajectory that touches upon the speaker's ability to endure the cruelties of parental abuse, and maturation into womanhood, alongside the joy's of noticing everyday details and using the imagination and a fearless poetic voice to confront―if not escape―suffering's violent hand.

About this title

About the Author:

DORIANNE LAUX is the author of several collections of poetry, including What We Carry, Facts about the Moon, and The Book of Men winner of The Paterson Prize. She teaches at North Carolina State University and is founding faculty for Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program.

From Publishers Weekly:

In her first book of poems, Laux's writing is at its most potent when she deals simply and bluntly with the vicissitudes of growing up and getting old. The almost matter-of-fact tone of "What My Father Told Me" and "Two Pictures of My Sister" expresses the resignation of girls who have learned to assimilate the horrors of sexual and physical violation into the otherwise innocuous routines of their childhood. Too often, however, the uncompromising directness of the poet's vision is diluted by imprecise metaphors and insignificant themes. The strained erotic images of "The Laundromat" are gratuitous as well as embarrassing, and "Adam's Dad Teaches the Kids to Play Ball" transforms an already bland subject into a cliche. It is difficult to believe that this is the same writer who, in "Quarter to Six," gives us such a masterfully complex portrait of a friendship between two women battling the pain of their pasts amid the hellishness of a mental asylum. This poem, encompassing Laux's most important themes, is the vibrant heart of this uneven but provocative collection.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Carnegie Mellon University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0887485731
• ISBN 13: 9780887485732
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 72