Easy Math (Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry) - Softcover

Shapiro, Lauren

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1936747480 ISBN 13: 9781936747481

Publisher: Sarabande Books, 2013

Synopsis

Selected by Marie Howe for the 2011 Kathryn A. Morton Prize, Easy Math is anxious and exuberant both. Lauren Shapiro’s poems are Aesop stood on end, wry fables that defy our instinct to find a moral to the story. Instead, she offers us a gimlet eye to the disappointments of the world, tall tale-telling by turns rickety, defiant, and brave. “There are an infinite number of ways to torture the soul with hopefulness” Shapiro says, so we settle for ways to survive—crooked grins, twisted logic, and equations of jello shots, amusement parks, and post-it notes that never add up. “Everyone has something to say / about love and impermanence and waste.” She says it better than most.

"Shapiro specializes in snappy, poignant retorts to the problems of pop culture. Joan Rivers, Lindsay Lohan, and even the wily Jersey Shore crew inhabit her crackling new volume of poems, winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry.... Shapiro guides readers into uncomfortable but evocative settings, from a surreal ESL classroom and plague-ridden Marseilles to a hotel workout room. Imagination does not just take flight here; it rides the airport shuttle bus and connects travelers from different continents."
--Booklist

"Lauren Shapiro can downshift from the sublime to the profane and back again in less than five seconds. Energy and joy create these metaphors, and if they are in discourse with postmodern malaise, they almost win the argument."
—Marie Howe

About this title

About the Author

Lauren Shapiro received a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Brown University and an M.F.A. in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is a former associate acquiring editor at the Yale University Press and has translated poetry from Spanish, Italian, Vietnamese, and Arabic into English. Her poems have been published in such journals as Pool, Passages North, 32 Poems, Forklift, Ohio, Drunken Boat, notnostrums, and Thermos. She is a curator of the Monsters of Poetry Reading Series and an assistant editor at Rescue Press. She lives and teaches in Madison, Wisconsin.

Reviews

Shapiro specializes in snappy, poignant retorts to the problems of pop culture. Joan Rivers, Lindsay Lohan, and even the wily Jersey Shore crew inhabit her crackling new volume of poems, winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry. Celebrities are no mere straw men (or women); Shapiro expertly resists glibness by mixing exaggerated tabloid personalities with vulnerable, civilian observers. Speakers cheerfully mock themselves as well as the conventions of poetry: “When I bite into apple, it tastes like apple,” says one. The other agrees, “Yeah, yeah, it’s all about / perspective.” Shapiro guides readers into uncomfortable but evocative settings, from a surreal ESL classroom and plague-ridden Marseilles to a hotel workout room. Imagination does not just take flight here; it rides the airport shuttle bus and connects travelers from different continents. In “Encounter,” one of the strongest poems, Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale meet on a hillside to talk about God and fate. The luminary nurses draw some conclusions, but then, in a delightful twist, discover that neither of them is married and make a date for dinner. --Carolyn Alessio

Edition details

• Publisher: Sarabande Books
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1936747480
• ISBN 13: 9781936747481
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 64