The Place One Is - Softcover

Ronk, Martha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1632431033 ISBN 13: 9781632431035

Publisher: Omnidawn, 2022

Synopsis

A collection from celebrated poet Martha Ronk considering the relationship between person, body, and place.
 
The Place One Is explores the intersection of person and place, the ways in which changes in the tangible world alter one’s vision, bodily posture, vocabulary, and concern for—to take one example—the dwindling water supply in California. The body’s position, its geometry, and the topography of the surrounding land become less and less recognizable as body and world blend together. Gravel giving way underfoot mirrors the way that words dissolve into mumbles, and the skeleton of a rusty car on the sand appears like one’s own skeleton. Ronk shows that disintegration here is disintegration there. These poems also wonder at interdependence, considering how lines intersect and continue to connect us to the sea—and to islands, lagoons, greenery, sky, and space. 
 
In the first part of the collection, the poems focus on a rural landscape, and in the second part, they consider the overly bright urban world of Los Angeles. 
 

About this title

About the Author

Martha Ronk is the author of thirteen books of poetry, a memoir, and a collection of short stories, Glass Grapes. Her books include The Place One Is, A Myth of Ariadne, Silences, Ocular Proof, Transfer of Qualities (longlisted for the National Book Award), and in a landscape of having to repeat. Her work has been included in the anthologies Lyric Postmodernisms, American Hybrid, Not for Mothers Only, and most recently in North American Women Poets in the 21st Century. She is the emeritus Irma and Jay Price Professor of English at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Edition details

• Publisher: Omnidawn
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1632431033
• ISBN 13: 9781632431035
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 64