Synopses & Reviews
"Anna Rabinowitz gives us language at a height and experience at a depth that the whole art suddenly appears as a plinth on the plain of American letters."-Molly Peacock
In this probing exploration of motherhood, one of our most imaginative contemporary poets cuts through the pieties to the human issues spiraling around the Annunciation and the Virgin Mary. This is not a "religious"book by any means. Instead, we see a new slant on freedom, subjugation, and the mother-child relationship illuminated by interconnected fragments, lyrics, multiple choice questions, argument, and ancient texts. The Wanton Sublimerewards with formal invention and linguistic brilliance-blissful marriages of form and content.
WHO/WHAT IS IT COMES?
Out of a vast silence, a spring spray, a drench of dew, all so still
into the cave of her body?
For mother read lover
For "like dew in April/That falleth on the flower"read
"like dew in April/That falleth to de-flower"
String theorists concede that their equations
are approximations to an unknown theory they call M-theory
standing for matrix, magic,
mystery of mother
as in mother of all theories
as in mother of us all
Anna Rabinowitz's volumes of poetry include Darkling, finalist for ForeWord Magazine's Best Poetry Book of 2001 Award, and At the Site of Inside Out, winner of the Juniper Prize. A former NEA Arts Fellow, she has published widely in such journals as Atlantic Monthly, Boston Review, The Paris Review, and Best American Poetry 1989.
Synopsis
Poetry. In a probing exploration of womanhood, Anna Rabinowitz's THE WANTON SUBLIME cuts through the pieties to the human issues spiraling around the Annunciation and the Virgin Mary. Yet this is not a "religious" book by any means. Instead, we see a new slant on freedom, subjugation, and the mother-child relationship, illuminated by interconnected fragments, lyrics, multiple choice questions, argument, and ancient texts. THE WANTON SUBLIME rewards readers with formal invention and linguistic brilliance in a blissful marriage of form and content. "Anna Rabinowitz gives us language at a height and experience at a depth that the whole art suddenly appears as a plinth on the plain of American letters"--Molly Peacock.