Pocket Sundial (Wisconsin Poetry Series) (Volume 1988) - Softcover

Zeidner, Lisa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0299119246 ISBN 13: 9780299119249

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988

Synopsis

In this, the fourth volume to win the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, Lisa Zeidner&;s twenty-two poems introduce a surprising range of characters, from a cryogenically preserved caveman to a 78-year-old widow arrested for shoplifting. Some of the narratives collected here are unusually long (like &;Dementia Colander,&; a mock-epic about the history of an unnamed nation whose king suffers a rare disease). These poems attempt to offer not just poetic moments, glimpses of joy or loss, but a sense of self in time and history&;whole lives in all of their busy-ness and disorder. Lisa Zeidner&;s dark wit considers any subject, from the Holocaust to child abuse, a subject for intellectual playfulness and emotional discovery.
    Despite the range of subjects, the poems in Pocket Sundial are bound by a concern for time, for how we think about time. These are poems about memory, foresight, anticipation, regret&;all of chronology&;s complexities.

About this title

About the Author

Lisa Zeidner is associate professor of English at Rutgers University in Camden, where she teaches writing and literature. Her first book of poems, Talking Cure, was published by Texas Tech Press in 1982. She has also written two novels, Customs and Alexandra Freed, both published by Alfred A. Knopf.

From the Back Cover

This is a book of poetry. Lisa Zeidner brilliantly inverts her subjects, tipping them over to find what fascinates her.

Reviews

A scientist tries to elucidate the concept of time to a caveman who has been revivified in the 20th century ("at this rate it will take years / to explain year "); a woman shoplifts because she associates certain objects with her late husband; a daughter attempts to reconcile memories of abusive parents with her present benign relationship with them. Zeidner ( Talking Cure ) observes in the hilarious "Dementia Colander": "in life most things are erosions, / not earthquakes, / most changes / not even slow but undetectable / until much later, / when hindsight makes an epiphany / of one note in the symphony. / For most of us, life itself / is a shaggy dog joke / with a disappointing punchline." Because Zeidner's perspective is always changing, her poems are dynamic and unpredictable, and she successfully conveys a sense of the fluid nature of time and viewpoint in these "pocket sundials." Zeidner infuses verses with warmth, dry wit and a celebratory sense of the subtleties of language, punning shamelessly and drawing metaphors to their illogical extremes.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0299119246
• ISBN 13: 9780299119249
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 104