Synopses & Reviews
praise for Her bookIn Her book, Éireann Lorsung inhabits the uncertain and fluid boundaries between the body and the world, the self and the other. For the poet, the word searches out the image and gives it substance. For the reader, these poems offer a materiality of their own: The bodys speech packs around it like wasp / paper. Speaking a thin, permanent / archive. The poems in this volume breach the ordinary parameters of space, time, and sense perception. To experience them is to occupy the space between in a surprising and yet subtle way.” KATHLEEN JESME
Her book has something of the gurlesque to it: The most gentle apocalypse in the world. But this will lead the reader, with remarkable sureness, not toward the viscera of the gender spectacle revealed via exaggeration, but rather into the miniature, the closely observed, the travesties and utopias of the quietest moments. It is from these moments that the whole is constructed, the molecules that compose both her book and her life in a Collision of the cellular level and the structures. It is an aching and eloquent whole indeed.” JOSHUA CLOVER
Part ecstatic recollection of the many ways places and objects leave their indelible marks upon our bodies and brains, and part timeless ode to the strange female beast that pounds inside us all, Her book resurrects the enchanting power of personal and historically feminine mythology. Exacting, and at the same time utterly magical, Lorsungs work opens a door to an unusually radiant universe where everything within is set ablaze by pure wonderment.” ADA LIMÓN
praise for Music for Landing Planes By
In this amazing first book, Éireann Lorsung enters deeply into the everyday--only to emerge awestruck, open, and generous. In her hands both the world and the word are transformed into something radiant.” NICK FLYNN
Music for Landing Planes By is a young womans love song to the planet. Images flock from a vivid pastoral world, uncarded fleece, wrens in thatch, chaff, lathe and hasp, joining the speaker in her effort to stitch prayer and dream, city and country, into one shimmering fabric of ardor.” LESLIE ADRIENNE MILLER
Éireann Lorsungs first book, Music for Landing Planes By, was named a New and Noteworthy collection by Poets and Writers. Since receiving her MFA from the University of Minnesota, she has lived in France and the U.K. Lorsung now edits the journal 1110 and co-runs MIEL Books. She lives in Belgium.
Cover design by Gretchen Achilles/Wavetrap Design
Cover art © Kiki Smith and Universal Limited Art Editions, Inc.
Review
"In
Her book, Éireann Lorsung inhabits the uncertain and fluid boundaries between the body and the world, the self and the other. For the poet, the word searches out the image and gives it substance. For the reader, these poems offer a materiality of their own: [The bodys] speech packs around it like wasp/ paper. Speaking a thin, permanent/ archive. The poems in this volume breach the ordinary parameters of space, time, and sense perception. To experience them is to occupy the space between in a surprising and yet subtle way.”
Kathleen Jesme
Synopsis
With intelligence and crystalline clarity, a chorus of female voices speaks through the poems in
Her book, Éireann Lorsung's inspired second collection.
From the poet who brought us Music For Landing Planes By, Éireann Lorsungs luminous voice is distilled through multiple unnamed female speakers in this, her second collection. Full of youth, wonder, and imagination, Her book crosses distances and generations to celebrate the lives of women, their individual and shared experiences, and the bonds that bring them together. This is also a book about translation (of experience into art, of knowledge across time and space) and conversation (with, for instance, work by Kiki Smith, widely known as a feminist artist). Lorsung writes additionally about her time spent in England and friendships she formed with women there. Together these poems comprise both her book (Lorsungs), and hers (encompassing all who identify with that word).
Synopsis
With intelligence and crystalline clarity, a chorus of female voices speaks through the poems in
Her book, Eireann Lorsung's inspired second collection.
From the poet who brought us Music For Landing Planes By, Eireann Lorsung's luminous voice is distilled through multiple unnamed female speakers in this, her second collection. Full of youth, wonder, and imagination, Her book crosses distances and generations to celebrate the lives of women, their individual and shared experiences, and the bonds that bring them together. This is also a book about translation (of experience into art, of knowledge across time and space) and conversation (with, for instance, work by Kiki Smith, widely known as a feminist artist). Lorsung writes additionally about her time spent in England and friendships she formed with women there. Together these poems comprise both her book (Lorsung's), and hers (encompassing all who identify with that word).
Synopsis
"Exacting, and at the same time utterly magical. --ADA LIM N
With intelligence and crystalline clarity, a chorus of female voices speaks through the poems in Her book, ireann Lorsung's luminous second collection.
Full of youth, wonder, and imagination, Her book crosses distances and generations to celebrate the lives of women, their individual and shared experiences, and the bonds that bring them together. This is also a book about translation (of experience into art, of knowledge across time and space), conversation (with, for instance, work by the artist Kiki Smith), and friendship (especially those made during Lorsung's time in England). In these poems, the female body rises from a foundation of stars. Songbirds are cut from paper and stormy light. And letters arrive, and disappear, mysteries contained within.
"Part ecstatic recollection of the many ways places and objects leave their indelible marks upon our bodies and brains, and part timeless ode to the strange female beast that pounds inside of us all" (Ada Lim n), Her book is both an inspired work from Lorsung and, fundamentally, her book--poems belonging to all women.
About the Author
Native Minnesotan
Éireann Lorsung's first book,
Music for Landing Planes By, was published by Milkweed in 2007. Since then, she has lived in France, the UK, and Belgium. Lorsung edits the journal
1110 and co-runs MIEL Books, a small press.
Table of Contents
1 / Fifteen poems for Kiki Smith
Revelation
Carrier (standing woman carrying wolf)
Standing
Rapture
Untitled (camera)
Girl with chain
It falls into ruin by its own weight
Scaffold body
Daughters
Dowry cloth
Honey brain
The cellsthe moon
Familiars
Stars and scat
Blue blanket
2 / Girllife
First principles
Historical fragment
Pink
A collection of beauties at the height of their popularity
And so the last day came, and the last hour of the last day
Bee summer
City pleasure
England, or the continent I had in mind when I came here
Sweets
Live bees
The birdwoman at Grasmere
Smooth stone, fox
How it all began
Historical fragment
The birdwoman in the cathedral
International postage coupon
Bird construction
Honey
3 / Reconstruction
Autoportrait tree
Post
Think on the lilies of the field
Listening to other people's praying
Creation tune
Sewing together
Quilt with birds
Eating the archive
Single page drawing
Transubstantiation