Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In this sixth collection by award-winning poet Sharon Dolin, Manual for Living offers three distinct approaches to life, each one riven by flashes of joy and despair, and all conditions in between. With a fresh slant on the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, the title section offers a part-serious, part tongue-in-cheek series of advice poems. An ekphrastic sequence based on the black paintings of Goya follows, as a darker meditation on life. The final section, Of Hours, is a contemporary sequence of psalms where the possibility for redemption in prayer exists. As in all of her work, Dolin s lyric voice attends to language and the world equally. Her verbal sleights-of-hand offer readers insights for ways to live. Manual for Living is a wise book: drink deeply from it."