Synopses & Reviews
Camera Lyrica navigates the intersection between realism and naturalism, locating moment by moment--the only way it can--the artful, necessary, and always mysterious transformation that occurs between the perceiver and perceived. Amy Newman's subjects range from Audubon's drive for precision, Michelangelo's unfinished Pietá, Darwin and forty-year old Barbie, to a meditation on the diversity of Type itself. With grace and dexterity, her intelligent eye dips into Catholic Mysteries, and the quiet but momentous domesticity of a backyard quince tree. Hers is a language both lush and spare, as she filters it and the world through a lucid imagination, transforming both into something beautiful, challenging, and wholly new.
Synopsis
Poetry. This is a matter of perfection, over time,/ and complication. Did the orchid have the means / to think itself into seducing, to adapt as idea/ the perfect dress of reproduction,/ the female wasp// a bit of fur and soft petal/ curved like its soft parts (from Darwin's Unfinished Notes to Emma). Winner of the 1999 Beatrice Hawley Award, Amy Newman's second book of poetry has been praised by Barbara Jordan, Mark Irwin, and Tom Andrews. Newman's genius is of a particular and urgent understanding, i.e. that we are summoned, by Nature and Language, not merely to continue but to begin worlds . . . The Eden of her alphabet is new, is open -- Donald Revell.
Synopsis
"No matter how intricate, uncomfortable, or orphic her subject, Newman's camera never flinches from her duty; her eye never shudders, except in rapture and that is to be forgiven, or rather, rewarded. In a time where bland, prosaic poetry has become the norm, and self-centered confessionalism the standard fare, how refreshing it is to read and experience these crafted, abundant, lyrical poems, these panoramic snapshots of enduring historical and social commentary." -American Oral