Star Ledger (Iowa Poetry Prize) - Softcover

Hull, Lynda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0877453195 ISBN 13: 9780877453192

Publisher: University Of Iowa Press, 1990

Synopsis

In this dark but finally redemptive group of poems, the tawdry and the exquisite must coexist: Star Ledger may evoke images of the celestial, but it is also the name of the Newark morning newspaper. Such ironies continually inform Hull’s poetry, which is tough and uncompromising but richly veined with a musicality and a lyrical texture that recall earlier epics of the American city such as The Bridge and Paterson.

About this title

About the Author

Lynda Hull was born in Newark in 1954. Her first volume of poetry, Ghost Money, won the Juniper Prize in 1986. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, the New Yorker, Ploughshares, and the Gettysburg Review. She died in 1994.

From Publishers Weekly

Hull ( Ghost Money ) inhabits a decaying universe swirling with trashed hopes and the ashes of burned-out desire. She often uses the metaphor of indifferent, moribund cities to convey a sense of promise unfulfilled, of "crippled dreams" and inexplicably wasted lives. Hers is a world where nothing is sure, where "one minute you're dancing," and the next, "you're flying / through plate glass and the whole damn town is burning." The subject of these poems is the poet's life, one that involves a search for connections between people and things that will give a clue to the meaning of our entropic existence. In "Aubade," one of the keenest and most accessible of the poems, Hull confronts the essential loneliness of the human condition. The speaker is gardening at 5:05 a.m., and notices her neighbor exercising on his fire escape. Fantasizing a life of emptiness for this man, she contemplates calling out, " It is I / the one for whom you have been waiting. / Come down. Let us join forces. " The poet's wayward voice perfectly matches her vision, her images and settings often stumbling into each other for chaotic effect. This is an intensely felt, finely wrought body of work.
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About this edition

• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0877453195
• ISBN 13: 9780877453192
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 108