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Other titles in the McSweeney's Poetry series:

Love, an Index (McSweeney's Poetry)

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Love, an Index (McSweeney's Poetry) Cover

ISBN13: 9781936365791
ISBN10: 1936365790
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

A man disappears. The woman who loves him is left scarred and haunted. In her fierce, one-of-a-kind debut, Rebecca Lindenberg tells the story — in verse — of her passionate relationship with Craig Arnold, a much-respected poet who disappeared in 2009 while hiking a volcano in Japan. Lindenberg's billowing, I-contain-multitudes style lays bare the poets sadnesses, joys, and longings in poems that are lyric and narrative, at once plainspoken and musically elaborate.

Regarding her role in Arnold's story, Lindenberg writes with clear-eyed humility and endearing dignity: “The girl with the ink-stained teeth / knows she's famous / in a tiny, tragic way. / She's not / daft, after all.” And then later, playfully, of her travels in Italy with the poet, her lover: “The carabinieri / wanted to know if there were bears / in our part of America. Yes, we said, / many bears. Man-eating bears? Yes, of course, / many man-eating bears.” Every poem in this collection bursts with humor, pathos, verve — and an utterly unique, soulful voice.

This widely anticipated debut, already selected as a finalist for several prominent book awards, marks the first collection in the newly minted McSweeney's Poetry Series. MPS is an imprint which seeks to publish a broad range of excellent new poetry collections in exquisitely designed hardcovers — poetry that's useful and meaningful to anyone in any walk of life.

Review:

"The whole of Lindenberg's debut is her memorial to her late husband, the widely admired poet Craig Arnold (Made Flesh), who disappeared while hiking around a Japanese volcano in 2009. Unified by its passion and looks back at an exemplary and an exceptional romance, the volume avoids monotony through the forms that Lindenberg adopts or invents. Two prose poems are called 'Status Update' — one of them says, 'Rebecca Lindenberg has joined the group It All Seems So Simple Now, In the Aftermath of This Consciousness-Altering Tragedy.' Sparse free verse recalls travel together, or else echoes Sappho's monodies: 'Hush, hush, heart-monster — // I'm varnishing/ the bone-ladder.// Don't worry, he'll be back// any minute now.' Literal memories (some involving Arnold's teenage son) balance out lyrical spells, and terse forms balance profuse ones, in this book that amounts to a prolonged keening, a transparent if information-rich lament. The long title poem presents itself as an index ('TELEPHONE/ bill, all those phone calls... TELEPHONE mobile, for so long you refused to have one... TORREY, Utah'): it's more like an essay, less lyrical, than the rest, and many readers will go there first. The volume is also the first in the new poetry series from McSweeney's Books." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Review:

Love, an Index is an utterly startling, muscular, heartbreaking book — poems pulled into existence by an event anyone who reads them wants only to reverse. Yet facing the irreversible fully, and still finding words, is what poems do. They demonstrate what it is to go on. I wish this book were not here to be read. But it is. And be read it will, with gratitude, stopped breath, amazement.” Jane Hirshfield

Review:

"These poems accomplish — beautifully, fiercely — fix a life into a handful of moments, beyond the flow of eternity. But here Lindenberg's attention is always drifting beyond the page, to the terrible what-is, the tender what-ifs. Each poem seems to say, This is what we were given, this is what we made, and it must now, somehow, be enough." Nick Flynn

Review:

"An A-to-Z collection of poems that are passionate, plainspoken, elegiac, and lyric as they capture the moments of a life shared." Vanity Fair

Review:

"Perfectly conjures the inevitable inseparability of grief and love." Elliot Bay Book Company

Review:

"These poems are heartbreaking, not just because they mourn a lover lost but because they celebrate the enduring presence of a love shared." Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)

Review:

"Lindenberg executes her grief in measured, clean lines that speak of more to come... It comes to the point where a single word reaches out and takes the reader by the heart." Weave Magazine

Review:

"Beautiful and romantic." School Library Journal

Review:

"Lindenberg effortlessly creates an egoless world, full of feeling yet devoid of melodrama....A poet of immense power." Bin Nguyen, ZYZZYVA

Review:

"Love, An Index tells a beautiful and heartbreaking story." The Rumpus
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About the Author

Rebecca Lindenberg received her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Utah, where she studied under Donald Revell. Her poems have appeared in the Believer, The Huffington Post, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Poetry and elsewhere. She was awarded a fellowship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center in 2009, and a National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship in 2011. Lindenberg lives in Salt Lake City.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Jane Packer, April 12, 2013 (view all comments by Jane Packer)
I highly recommend Lindberg’s debut collection of poetry for everyone--novice poets, avid readers of poetry, and especially those looking to increase their appreciation of the art form.
I was first introduced to Rebecca Lindenberg when she came to BYU for a poetry reading. If I thought that I loved her after completing a preliminary reading assignment before she came, I absolutely adored her personality and her rich poetry after the incredibly human, downright charming reading.
I was especially captivated by the repeated elements that tied some of her poems together. She mentioned her tall, tall man more than once, and she also used desire several times. Within “Love, An Index” the poem, for example, she could connect elements through her gloss medium by saying, “see also, Desire.” It was so clear through her poems that she was expressing, as she mentioned during the reading, love and grief in all of its forms.
This is the first encounter that I’ve had with gloss poetry that really stands out to me. It makes a lot of sense that she employed the gloss form to tackle such an emotional subject. She mentioned that she used gloss because she could only point to her story, not tell it expressly. All is equally important and equally present in the now of the poem. I am so grateful that she was brave enough to use the tragic disappearance of her boyfriend, Craig Arnold, as inspiration to finish this incredible collection.
I especially recommend “Which, If I Never Thought to Mention it Before, I Now Feel Compelled to Address,” “Illuminating,” “Catalogue of Ephemera,” and, of course, “Love, an Index.”
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Product Details

ISBN:
9781936365791
Author:
Lindenberg, Rebecca
Publisher:
McSweeney's Books
Subject:
Single Author / American
Subject:
Poetry-A to Z
Copyright:
2012
Edition Description:
Trade Cloth
Series:
McSweeney's Poetry Series
Publication Date:
20120331
Binding:
HARDCOVER
Language:
English
Pages:
96
Dimensions:
7.5 x 5.5 in
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Related Subjects

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Fiction and Poetry » Poetry » A to Z
Fiction and Poetry » Poetry » Featured Titles

Love, an Index (McSweeney's Poetry) New Hardcover
0 stars - 0 reviews
$18.00 In Stock
Product details 96 pages McSweeney's Books - English 9781936365791 Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review" by , "The whole of Lindenberg's debut is her memorial to her late husband, the widely admired poet Craig Arnold (Made Flesh), who disappeared while hiking around a Japanese volcano in 2009. Unified by its passion and looks back at an exemplary and an exceptional romance, the volume avoids monotony through the forms that Lindenberg adopts or invents. Two prose poems are called 'Status Update' — one of them says, 'Rebecca Lindenberg has joined the group It All Seems So Simple Now, In the Aftermath of This Consciousness-Altering Tragedy.' Sparse free verse recalls travel together, or else echoes Sappho's monodies: 'Hush, hush, heart-monster — // I'm varnishing/ the bone-ladder.// Don't worry, he'll be back// any minute now.' Literal memories (some involving Arnold's teenage son) balance out lyrical spells, and terse forms balance profuse ones, in this book that amounts to a prolonged keening, a transparent if information-rich lament. The long title poem presents itself as an index ('TELEPHONE/ bill, all those phone calls... TELEPHONE mobile, for so long you refused to have one... TORREY, Utah'): it's more like an essay, less lyrical, than the rest, and many readers will go there first. The volume is also the first in the new poetry series from McSweeney's Books." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
"Review" by , Love, an Index is an utterly startling, muscular, heartbreaking book — poems pulled into existence by an event anyone who reads them wants only to reverse. Yet facing the irreversible fully, and still finding words, is what poems do. They demonstrate what it is to go on. I wish this book were not here to be read. But it is. And be read it will, with gratitude, stopped breath, amazement.”
"Review" by , "These poems accomplish — beautifully, fiercely — fix a life into a handful of moments, beyond the flow of eternity. But here Lindenberg's attention is always drifting beyond the page, to the terrible what-is, the tender what-ifs. Each poem seems to say, This is what we were given, this is what we made, and it must now, somehow, be enough."
"Review" by , "An A-to-Z collection of poems that are passionate, plainspoken, elegiac, and lyric as they capture the moments of a life shared."
"Review" by , "Perfectly conjures the inevitable inseparability of grief and love."
"Review" by , "These poems are heartbreaking, not just because they mourn a lover lost but because they celebrate the enduring presence of a love shared."
"Review" by , "Lindenberg executes her grief in measured, clean lines that speak of more to come... It comes to the point where a single word reaches out and takes the reader by the heart."
"Review" by , "Beautiful and romantic."
"Review" by , "Lindenberg effortlessly creates an egoless world, full of feeling yet devoid of melodrama....A poet of immense power."
"Review" by , "Love, An Index tells a beautiful and heartbreaking story."
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