Synopses & Reviews
A New York Times Notable Book of 2010
Longlisted for the Warwick Writing Prize
Verses, essays, confessions, reports, translations, drafts, treatises, laments and utopias, 19952007. Collected by Elisa Sampedrin.
Lisa Robertson writes poems that mine the past its ideas, its personages, its syntax to construct a lexicon of the future. Her poems both court and cuckold subjectivity by unmasking its fundament of sex and hesitancy, the coil of doubt in its certitude. Reading her laments and utopias, we realize that language whiplike casts ahead of itself a fortuitous form. The form brims here pleasurably with dogs, movie stars, broths, painting's detritus, Latin and pillage. Erudite and startling, the poems in Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip, occasional works written over the past fifteen years, turn vestige into architecture, chagrin into resplendence. In them, we recognize our grand, saddened century.
Review
'Here as in six earlier glittering books, Robertson proves hard to explain but easy to enjoy ... Dauntlessly and resourcefully intellectual, Robertson can also be playful or blunt ... Though she wields ... language expertly, even beautifully, she also shows an almost pagan delight in embodiment.' New York Times
'Robertson makes intellect seductive; only her poetry could turn swooning into a critical gesture.' The Village Voice
'Robertson is one of our most crisply intelligent writers, and the poems and prose pieces in Lisa Robertsons Magenta Soul Whip ... continually knock readers off their conventional responses, asking that they follow the curlicues of thought-in-motion the writing displays.' Canadian Literature
'Magenta Soul Whip manages to exist in a universe of its own making, in which Baudelaire and Lucretius both make appearances, as do Jesus Christ and the adulteress he saved from stoning, a conversational dog, and contemporary Canadian visual artist Lucy Hogg. The book teaches us how to read it as it unfolds for us page by page.' Jerry Magazine
'[Robertson's] preoccupations are as much lyrical and communicative ... as they are intellectual.' Quill and Quire
Review
"Robertson's poetry is populated with facts, assertions, and conjectures that borrow from scientific language. In her hands, these 'facts' take on sadness and grace: 'Because it is a known fact / the wounded fall towards the point.'" Katie Fowley, Rain Taxi (read the entire )
Synopsis
Lisa Robertson's poems both court and cuckold subjectivity by unmasking its fundament of sex and hesitancy, the coil of doubt in its certitude.
Reading her laments and utopias, we realize that, in any she and a she's assumption of thinking, language whiplike casts ahead of itself a fortuitous form. The form brims here pleasurably with dogs, movie stars, broths, paintings detritus, Latin, and pillage. We recognize our grand, saddened century.
Editor Elisa Sampedrn says, 'Every time I found a poem of hers, she saved me writing one. She gave volume to my intervals. I kept looking. I radiated. I made requests. I found other Lisa Robertson's and rejected them: she is not a flight attendant, not a cheerleader or home shopping host. She is chagrins first companion, error. When I find her in person, I'll engage her in fisticuffs.'
Synopsis
A New York Times 100 Notable Book and longlisted for the Warwick Writing Prize, Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip collects occasional works written over the past fifteen years, turning vestige into architecture, chagrin into resplendence. In them, we recognize our grand, saddened century.
Synopsis
Erudite and startling, the poems in Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip turn vestige into architecture, chagrin into resplendence.
About the Author
Lisa Robertson (born on July 22 1961) in Toronto is a Canadian poet who currently lives in Oakland. In 1979, she moved to British Columbia, where she remained for twenty-three years. During her time there, she was a member of The Kootenay School of Writing, which is a non-profit society that offers an alternative to the mainstream pedagogy of most Canadian universities. Although it is not necessarily acknowledged as much as her ties to The Kootenay School of Writing, she was integrally involved in Vancouver's art scene. Robertson is an honorary board member of Artspeak Gallery. She has written on and reviewed exhibitions and pieces by Kelly Wood, Robert Garcet, Liz Magor, Allyson Clay, Kathy Slade, and Hadley+Maxwell, among others. She has also written on architecture and sites in British Columbia, such as New Brighton Park and Value Village. Robertson contributed the "Beneath the Pavilions" column to Mix from 1997-1999. She co-edited the poetry journal Raddle Moon with Susan Clark in Vancouver, and has worked as an arts journalist, a book seller, a copy editor, an astrologer, a guest lecturer, and an essayist. She has written on the work of Robin Blaser, Denise Riley, Dionne Brand, Peter Culley, Ted Berrigan, John Clare, Lorine Niedecker, Pauline Reage, Michele Bernstein and Albertine Sarrazin. In 2006, she was a judge of the Griffin Poetry Prize and Holloway poet-in-residence at UC Berkeley. Currently she is artist-in-residence at California College of the Arts, in San Francisco