Meme (Kuhl House Poets) - Softcover

Wheeler, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1609381270 ISBN 13: 9781609381271

Publisher: University Of Iowa Press, 2012

Synopsis

Acclaimed poet Susan Wheeler, whose last individual collection predicted the spiritual losses of the economic collapse, turns her attention to the most intimate of subjects: the absence or loss of love.

A meme is a unit of thought replicated by imitation; examples of memes, Richard Dawkins wrote, “are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.” Occupy Wall Street is a meme, as are internet ideas and images that go viral. What could be more potent memes than those passed down by parents to their children?

Wheeler reconstructs her mother’s voice—down to its cynicism and its mid twentieth-century midwestern vernacular—in “The Maud Poems,” a voice that takes a more aggressive, vituperative turn in “The Devil—or—The Introjects.” In the book’s third long sequence, a generational inheritance feeds cultural transmission in “The Split.” A set of variations on losses and break-ups—wildly, darkly funny throughout and, in places, devastatingly sad—“The Split” brings Wheeler’s lauded inventiveness, wit, and insight to the profound loss of love. One read, and the meme “Should I stay or should I go?” will be altered in your head forever.

About this title

About the Author:

Susan Wheeler is the author of the poetry collections Bag ‘o’ Diamonds, which received the Norma Farber First Book Award of the Poetry Society of America; Smokes, which won the Four Way Books Award; Source Codes; Ledger, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize; and Assorted Poems. Her novel, Record Palace, was published in 2005. She teaches at Princeton University, where she also directs the Creative Writing Program. 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Canasta       Mind your own beeswax or you’ll be tarred and feathered right here and now. Ray, the dog’s got something in her mouth. While you’re up, would you check the ham?                         You and the beast’s belly, its short sleek fur,                        its odor of a world beyond the curb. The tail                        rises, the fur fans out—             No, just see what the temperature is up to. Oh, I’ll do it. 

            That’s what I was afraid of. Dan, she skunked me. 

About this edition

• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1609381270
• ISBN 13: 9781609381271
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 87