Synopsis
Couto, Nancy Vieira
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From Publishers Weekly
In this uneven collection, selected by Maxine Kumin as the 1989 winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize for a first book of poetry, the poet's central concerns revolve around the theme of exploration--real and imagined journeys that chart new geographical, emotional and psychological territories--and the sense of alienation that comes with the status of "foreigner." Couto's "explorers" range from the Mexican immigrants in "Wetbacks" who "cross over--to live / the way we live, no better than cucharachas darting from the drain" to Christopher Columbus in "Finding America": in a revisionist version the discoverer of America is recast as a woman, a "middle-aged offspring of another / hemisphere, who measured the wrong star / and found a world." Unfortunately, the poet's promising thematic ambitions go unfulfilled. The book is riddled with awkward and imprecise metaphors ("You go to the parade / and see Grant Avenue swelling like a can of contaminated soup"), flimsy premises and an overemphasis on technical virtuosity at the expense of content--her use of form is too often stilted and out of sync with her subject matter.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
1958
Broiled Haddock
Elegy
Equestrians
The Face In The Water
Finding America: She Accepts Their Gifts
Finding America: She Pits Her Silhouette
Finding America: She Shares Miscalculations
Finding America: She Sweetens The Pot
I Forget To Eat My Bread
Ice Museum
Irijay
Living In The La Brea Tar Pits
Lizzie
Loosely
Magalhaes' Last Testament
Night Watch
On The Day Of Jayne Mansfield's Death
Promises
Tea Party
Wetbacks
You Bet Your Life
You Have Shown Me A Strange Image, And We Are Strange...
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
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The Face in the Water (Pitt Poetry Series)
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The Face in the Water (Pitt Poetry Series)
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The Face in the Water
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ISBN 10: 0822954400
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