Metropolitan Tang: Poems (A Black Sparrow Book) - Softcover

Bamber, Linda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1574232134 ISBN 13: 9781574232134

Publisher: Black Sparrow Press, 2008

Synopsis

Metropolitan Tang is Cambridge poet Linda Bamber's first book of poetry, a debut that is erudite and sassy, urban and urbane. Whether she is examining the breakup of her marriage or watching bulls in a field, considering Derrida's concepts of "presence"; or her hairdresser's less theoretical philosophy, Bamber receives stimuli as indiscriminately as an antenna, all eyes and ears; then her sharp and curious mind gets to work, turning over images and ideas until she finds their proper relations, making meaning out of random juxtapositions, sense out of chaos, or, if nothing else, a good joke out of a bad situation. Most first books of poetry are tentative experiments in voice; Bamber's voice, sensitive and, at the same time, wry, is clear throughout, uniquely hers and eminently likeable.

About this title

About the Author

Linda Bamber teaches English and creative writing at Tufts University.

Review

As a reader I have often wished, over the years, for a female poet in the style of [Frank] O'Hara: bopping but sincere, humanistic and grounded but exuberant and irreverent. Linda Bamber may be that person. --Tony Hoagland

As the title of this arresting first collection suggests, Linda Bamber is a city poet. She is also a writer who makes humankind her business. [...] Like the best and most memorable teachers Bamber brings the past to bear on the present in ways that inform and exhilarate. [...] An even deeper loyalty integrating this collection is Bamber's devotion to poetry. Her poems celebrate the work of Donne, of Herbert, and of Yeats, poets whose every thought, word, and beat moves toward resolution, as well as that of Stevens and O'Hara, who often invite the reader to connect the dots. Her own poems, like those of Bishop, whose reflections she channels in "Elizabeth Bishop on Brattle Street," while often far-ranging in scope, are brought to conclusions that surprise as well as satisfy.
"Surprise is a fundamental pleasure," Bamber observes in "Passenger Pigeons," the brilliant final poem of her book. It is one that awaits readers of Metropolitan Tang. --Ann Cobb, Harvard Review

As the title of this arresting first collection suggests, Linda Bamber is a city poet. She is also a writer who makes humankind her business. [...] Like the best and most memorable teachers Bamber brings the past to bear on the present in ways that inform and exhilarate. [...] An even deeper loyalty integrating this collection is Bamber's devotion to poetry. Her poems celebrate the work of Donne, of Herbert, and of Yeats, poets whose every thought, word, and beat moves toward resolution, as well as that of Stevens and O'Hara, who often invite the reader to connect the dots. Her own poems, like those of Bishop, whose reflections she channels in "Elizabeth Bishop on Brattle Street," while often far-ranging in scope, are brought to conclusions that surprise as well as satisfy.
"Surprise is a fundamental pleasure," Bamber observes in "Passenger Pigeons," the brilliant final poem of her book. It is one that awaits readers of Metropolitan Tang. --Ann Cobb, Harvard Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Black Sparrow Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1574232134
• ISBN 13: 9781574232134
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 110