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Dont Let Me Be Lonely

by Claudia Rankine
Dont Let Me Be Lonely

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  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9781555974077
ISBN10: 1555974074
Condition: Like New


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Staff Pick

To convince you that you need this book in your life, I will share one of my favorite excerpts from it, which is: "the sadness lives in the recognition that a life can not matter. Or, as there are billions of lives, my sadness is alive alongside the recognition that billions of lives never mattered. I write this without breaking my heart, without bursting into anything." Recommended By Junix S., 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.

Claudia Rankine is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Nothing in Nature Is Private, The End of the Alphabet, and Plot. She is also the co-editor of American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language. Rankine teaches in the writing program at the University of Houston.

Finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize Poet Claudia Rankine, widely celebrated for her experimental multi-genre writing, fuses the lyric poem, the essay, and the visual image in Don't Let Me Be Lonely. This is a politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America. With wit and intelligence, and with much heart, Rankine presents an extended self-conversation that always strives toward clarityof thought, of imaginationwhile also 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, delivered in a voice that is strong yet bewildered in the face of race riots, terrorist attacks, medicated depression, and the antagonism of the television that just won't leave us alone. "Out of short prose segments with the gravity of poetry, avant-garde poet Rankine assembles a very direct and moving meditation on Americans and death. A friends cancer, accounts of Rankine's dreams, 9/11, documents about the African AIDS crisis, and many other elements flow together like the motifs in the slow movement of a Beethoven symphony."Utne Reader

"Don't Let Me Be Lonely is a success, possessing a clarity [whereby the author] has graced us not only with her presence, but the ability to make ourselves presentto separate our consciousness from the droning media that drowns out life's possibilities."The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

"Claudia Rankine here manages an extraordinary melding of means to effect the most articulate and moving testament to the bleak times we live in I've yet seen. This is a master work in every sense, and altogether her own."Robert Creeley

Synopsis

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.


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.


5 2

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 5 (2 comments)

`
BookWormJess , December 29, 2016 (view all comments by BookWormJess)
I love this. It's a great blend of poetry, prose, and essay. I didn't want it to end. If you like unique works that touch on modern America you'll like this.

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`
Ashley Watson , January 09, 2008
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
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
09/01/2004
Publisher:
GRAYWOLF PRESS
Pages:
168
Height:
.50IN
Width:
5.50IN
Thickness:
.50
Number of Units:
1
Illustration:
Yes
Copyright Year:
2004
Author:
Claudia Rankine
Author:
Claudia Rankine
Subject:
Anthologies-Essays

Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$9.98
List Price:$16.00
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