Silver Roses (Karen & Michael Braziller Books) - Softcover

Wetzsteon, Rachel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0892553642 ISBN 13: 9780892553648

Publisher: Persea, 2010

Synopsis

"Rachel Wetzsteon achieves maturity and mastery in this poignant collection."―Harold Bloom

This bittersweet posthumous collection solidifies Rachel Wetzsteon's place among the most talented poets of her generation. Written with her characteristic wit, incisiveness, and flair, it confirms her as a peerless flaneuse of New York City, a skeptical yet large-hearted bookworm with spot-on takes about culture, love, and loss.

About this title

About the Author

Rachel Wetzsteon's collections include Sakura Park and Silver Roses. At the time of her death, she was the poetry editor of The New Republic and lived in New York City.

Reviews

Gifts for wry humor, stanzaic and rhyming forms, and literary allusion animate the best parts of this sometimes sparkling fourth and final collection from Wetzsteon, who built up a serious reputation (in part for light verse) before she took her own life in December 2009. Delight in set forms, in wit and verbal games, and even inside jokes will stand out on first reading. "Pursuits of Happiness" retells the plots of Hollywood comedies in stanza forms from 17th-century metaphysical poems: "Go, and fetch the chilled champagne." The very next page addresses Ludwig Wittgenstein's famous philosophical illustration, the always-ambiguous head that could be either rabbit or duck, in stunt-worthy rhyme: "realists... shun the appeal its/ rare white fur holds, although they feel it's/ a rabbit full of pluck." But to read through the collection is to see, gradually, the screens of humor open on real fears: of existential dread and failed romantic love. The more clearly personal poems may not highlight her particular talents, but they stick in the mind. They are rueful, regretful, frustrated, if never quite desperate: Wetzsteon calls "misanthropy my default mode, my armor"; her poems about urban life, love life, family life do often seem to grin through tears. (Nov.) (c)
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Poetry editor for the New Republic at the time of her suicide at age 42, Wetzsteon left a final collection that radiates searing pain and exceptional beauty. Her poems have a pulse, and they throb with lust, desire, and a need to be heard. Whether writing about lavender lipstick or profound loss, Wetzsteon demonstrates her keen sensitivity to the great range of life. A musicality pervades her poems, and her nuanced cadences and use of rhyme add percussive oomph to an already powerful voice. Silver Roses feels confessional and communicative because Wetzsteon uses the first person in a way that makes it easy to identify with her. Many of the poems are melancholy, others, like “An Actress Prepares,” capture cinematic tableaux, or, like ‘Ferocious Alphabets,” are playful experiments. Her easy shifting from whimsicality to rumination attests the complexity of the collection. Each poem feels raw and wide-awake and speaks deeply of being human. Delicate beauty surrounded by thorns, Weztsteon’s poems portray a soul laid bare. --Alizah Salario

Edition details

• Publisher: Persea
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0892553642
• ISBN 13: 9780892553648
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 104