FORM OF TAKING IT ALL - Softcover

Waldrop, Rosmarie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0882680919 ISBN 13: 9780882680910

Publisher: Station Hill Press, 2010

Synopsis

Just as the discovery of America in the fifteenth century forever altered the way Europeans viewed the world, so too did the theories of relativity and quantum physics radically alter the twentieth-century vision of the universe. Both encounters with otherness, on both a global and personal level, form the crux of Rosmarie Waldrop's extraordinary novel. The story roams the political worlds of old Mexico and Washington, D.C., and goes on to fuse the two great perceptual revolutions of the fifteenth and twentieth centuries - so that it is Columbus, in her fiction, who discovers the unpredicted particles of the new quantum physics. Waldrop's brilliant narrative shifts from stream of consciousness to first-person narration to poetry, in a unique meditation on love and politics, conquest and tolerance, and the effects of change.

About this title

About the Author:

Rosmarie Waldrop is the author of five books of poetry, including The Aggressive Stranger (Random House) and Streets Enough to Welcome Snow (Station Hill). She has written one book of criticism, Against Language? (Mouton) and many articles and reviews. She is the translator of Peter Weiss' Bodies and Shadows (Delacorte), Edmond Jabès' The Book of Questions (Wesleyan), and The Vienna Group: Six Major Austrian Poets (Station Hill). She was educated at the Universities of Freiburg, Aix-Marseille and Michigan, holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, and is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. She has also received a Columbia Translation Center Award. With Keith Waldrop, she is the editor and publisher of Burning Deck Press. She currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

From Library Journal:

In her second work of fiction, poet and translator Waldrop ( The Hanky of Pippin's Daughter, LJ 3/1/87) presents figures reminiscent of shadow puppets moving in blurred distance; when brought into focus, their emotions seem to exist without physical form. Moving from Mexico City to Washington, from past to present, this story of the budding relationship between two women is at once personal, historical, and political: "Columbus, the first to connect with the NEW WORLD: and the two hemispheres which God had cast asunder were united, how sexual, and began to become alike." With subtle repetition, imagery describing a dance or the making of a pot is offered as strangely insightful character description. Sources such as Poetry Handbook, The Conquest of Mexico , and a novel by Jane Bowles are collaged into an experimental gem that will more than likely intimidate the uninitiated. For larger collections.
- Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Station Hill Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0882680919
• ISBN 13: 9780882680910
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96