Endless Threshold - Softcover

Hirschman, Jack

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1880684004 ISBN 13: 9781880684009

Publisher: Curbstone Books, 1995

Synopsis

Endless Threshold is a people's poetry. Not the type of literature that is an individual's expression, brilliant introversion or exhibition of a cry, it's a poetry that makes the suffering and resistence of many the believable essence of life in the US today. Hirschman explores love, life on the streets, hunger, homelessness, and censorship in a lyrical, direct style. A deeply committed activist, Hirschman writes a poetry that is unabashedly political, fired with passion and humor.

About this title

About the Author

Jack Hirschman is a San Francisco poet, translator, and editor. His powerfully eloquent voice set the tone for political poetry in this country many years ago. Since leaving a teaching career in the '60s, Hirschman has taken the free exchange of poetry and politics into the streets where he is, in the words of poet Luke Breit, "America's most important living poet." He is the author of numerous books of poetry, plus some 45 translations from a half a dozen languages, as well as the editor of anthologies and journals. Among his many volumes of poetry are Endless Threshold, The Xibalba Arcane, and Lyripol (City Lights, 1976).

From Publishers Weekly

These poems address political and social issues ranging from the exhibition of an irreverent portrait of the mayor of Chicago to the Gulf war. The voice is often emotional and the speaker usually outraged by the real injustices (e.g., racism or government corruption) and cruelties (e.g., the abuse of women) in our society, but the poems fail to analyze the complications inherent in their subjects. Hirschman's politics, sometimes just plain hermetic, remains on the gut level: "America, you night / of bats and rocks / and garbage under / your white sheets." The more personal poems alternate between sentimentality and bad taste: "She is a languid mouth / making up / before my cock / with a hundred lipsticks . . . ." Hirschman's ( The Bottom Line ) language, rough, off-the-cuff, slightly bitter, is reminiscent of Philip Levine's, but his poems are technically amateurish: "We will not know, we've been told, who they are, / the sons and daughters of the working class." Like much poetry of this century designed with political intent, this work is drenched in self-indulgence but lacks originality.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Curbstone Books
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 1880684004
• ISBN 13: 9781880684009
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 123