Directions to My House (Pitt Poetry Series) - Softcover

Selman, Robyn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822955687 ISBN 13: 9780822955689

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995

Synopsis

"Robyn Selman's exact, hilarious, and often heartbreaking lyrics are anything but cool; I should say hot-headed, warm-hearted, astringent, peppery, and even, on her ardent, her tragic occasions, burning. Precision of utterance releases precision of feeling, up, up, and away!"―Richard Howard

About this title

Review

In an intimate voice, Selman's first book generously reveals a life -- touching, being held, the all-too-real probabilities of breakage, simple minutiae. Mixing conventional forms with unconventional rhyme schemes (sonnets appear most often), she writes at a runaway tempo that leaves the reader out of breath, anticipating. Selman frames the smart spiraled narratives of her journey to the house of the speaker in gentle lyrics. >From "For the Field": "Come across the field. I wish you would now./With our dutiful mothers, come across, with the gold stolen from their cousins' teeth./I wouldn't ask if I weren't ready." And the reader, thus invited, travels with map in hand through the ordinary-and-not stories of daughter, wayfarer, lesbian, friend. The narratives are quirky and juicy with detail, formally playful, a wholly satisfying ride on Amtrak and Greyhound -- that slow, savoring kind -- through landscapes of memory, discovery, love.
Copyright © 1996, Boston Review. All rights reserved. -- From The Boston Review

From Booklist

Selman bursts on the scene, but not firecracker-like with shocking themes and harsh language. Rather, her fine balancing of form and content surprises like an unexpected gift from a new friend. Her subjects range from her mother's heroism to her dog's early morning walking habits, but perhaps the finest piece in the collection is the longest, "Exodus," which in 15 short sections details a woman's journey through casual drug use, love, loss, and, finally, acceptance of her homosexuality. Near the end, all the woman's experiences merge and are distilled into the most potent of words. Whether discussing a young girl's attempts to disguise herself as a boy or an older woman's romantic memories of France, Selman weaves a spell made up of intelligence, empathy, and skill. Elizabeth Gunderson

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822955687
• ISBN 13: 9780822955689
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 72