Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The poems in FOREIGN MUSIC are intimate in focus and scale: taut and contemplative, they ruminate on family, exile, romantic love, and the vagaries of human perception. FOREIGN MUSIC, which gathers poems from several of Andr s Neuman's books into a single unified collection, is divided into three sections. The first, "Love Training," focus on family (and its history), loss, relationships, love, and a sense of anchoring in the world. The second, "Fictions of Sight," are associated with questions of perception, perspective, and creativity. And the third, "I Don't Know Why" - which is the first phrase of every poem in the section - is a whimsical set of interconnected poems that ask unanswered questions; it serves as a kind of coda to the book. While Andr s Neuman is a celebrated and widely translated novelist, he is also a lucid, sensitive, incisive - and quite prolific - poet. FOREIGN MUSIC is the first English translation of his poetry.
Synopsis
Taut and contemplative, these poems ruminate on family, exile, love, and the vagaries of human perception.
Love Training encapsulates Andr s Neuman's work as a poet, spanning two decades in a single unified collection. The book is divided into three sections that complement and respond to each other. The first, "Love Training," focuses on family, loss, relationships, desire, and a sense of anchoring in the world. The second, "Fictions of Sight," is concerned with questions of perception, perspective, language and creativity. The third, "I Don't Know Why," is a whimsical set of interconnected poems that ask unanswered questions, serving as a kind of coda.
While Andr s Neuman is a rightly celebrated and widely translated novelist, he is also a lucid--and quite prolific--poet. Love Training is the first volume to make his sensitive, incisive poems available in English.