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Don't Let Me Be Lonely
by Claudia Rankine

Don't Let Me Be Lonely Cover

Powells.com Staff Pick

There are little televisions throughout Don't Let Me Be Lonely. Really. Little photographs of televisions, sometimes depicting widely broadcast images from the news, sometimes only static, are interspersed throughout this long prose poem. The images come as a slight shock at first — poetry arguably being the antithesis of television — but as Rankine's compelling narrative voice navigates the images, the sound bites, the advertisements, and the inevitable detritus, the televisions become symbols for us — we sad, solitary, lost individuals. It both is and isn't as heavy as it sounds: her primary themes are death and depression, but her observations are often fiercely wry. Honestly, I've never been interested in overtly political poetry, but Rankine has made this political poetry so gut-wrenchingly personal, so emotionally resonant — not to mention the brilliant formal execution — that I will never write off political poetry again.
Recommended by Alexis, Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

In this powerful sequence of TV images and essay, Claudia Rankine explores the personal and political unrest of our volatile new century

I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes

me the saddest. The sadness is not really about

George W. or our American optimism; the

sadness lives in the recognition that a life can

not matter.

The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric, the essay, and the visual in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America. With wit and intelligence, Rankine strives toward an unprecedented clarity-of thought, imagination, and sentence-making-while arguing that recognition of others is the only salvation for ourselves, our art, and our government.

Don't Let Me Be Lonely is an important new confrontation with our culture, with a voice at its heart bewildered by its inadequacy in the face of race riots, terrorist attacks, medicated depression, and the antagonism of the television that won't leave us alone.

Synopsis:

The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric, the essay, and the visual in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America. With wit and intelligence, Rankine strives toward an unprecedented clarity--of thought, imagination, and sentence-making--while arguing that recognition of others is the only salvation for ourselves, our art, and our government. Don't Let Me Be Lonely is an important new confrontation with our culture, with a voice at its heart bewildered by its inadequacy in the face of race riots, terrorist attacks, medicated depression, and the antagonism of the television that won't leave us alone.
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About the Author

Claudia Rankine is the author of three collections of poetry: Nothing in Nature Is Private, The End of the Alphabet, and Plot. She teaches at the University of Georgia.

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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Ashley Watson, January 9, 2008 (view all comments by Ashley Watson)
An absolutely gorgeous book. Written in a lyrical prose that reinvents both poetry and memoir, Claudia Rankine's brilliance is evident in the first few lines of the book. Rankine writes from the dark side of the mental tracks, carefully chronicling America's ugliest and most tabooed truths, from clinical depression and rape to the false hope the media presents. But the fearless perspective of a poet's existential reality--her reality--does not leave the reader without hope. "The sadness," Rankine writes, "is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recognition that a life can not matter" (23). Genuine optimism is the recognition that we create our own realities, which is a refrain that pulses in the poet's unique rhythm throughout the book.

Rankine's ability to keep a metronomic pace with the repetition of the familiar image of a television screen filled with static, interchanged with eerie diagrams, personal photos, and real images from television, is astonishing. These images juxtaposed with her quiet lyrical voice create a breathless tone that is paradoxically calming. In this relatively short book, Rankine captures the essence of contemporary America through the threads connecting the modern media to our overwhelming and collective sadness. It is truly, "An American Lyric."

Stunning. You will not be disappointed.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9781555974077
Subtitle:
An American Lyric
Author:
Rankine, Claudia
Publisher:
Graywolf Press
Subject:
General
Subject:
Essays
Publication Date:
September 2004
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
168
Dimensions:
10.01x5.55x.49 in. .57 lbs.
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