Synopses & Reviews
Each entry in this book probes the dissolving boundaries between those sharing space with one another; and the various genres in the book—prose poem, creative nonfiction, and personal essay—echo the theme of interdependence. Transfer of Qualities addresses the uncanny and myriad ways in which people and things, but also people and those around them, exchange qualities with one another, moving in on and altering stance, attitude, mood, and gesture. Material things often seem amazingly alive and this collection follows an author engrossed with the boundaries between life and death, the moving and the still, and the stone-like book and the vivid stirring within the pages. There are many influences behind this collection, but the major genie of the piece is Henry James whose musings in The Sacred Fount provided the books title and direction.
Review
"Ronks 10th collection takes as its central tenet the idea that people and objects engage in a deep kind of transference… desires and thoughts are imprinted on the thing, and some aspects of the thing rub off on the person." —Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
Transfer of Qualities addresses the uncanny and myriad ways in which people and things, but also people and those around them, exchange qualities with one another, moving in on, unsettling: altering stance, attitude, mood, gesture. Each entry in the book probes the dissolving boundaries between those sharing space with one another; and the various cross-genres in the book--prose poem, creative non-fiction, personal essay--echo the theme of inter-dependence. Material things often seem amazingly alive and tropic--a puppet or toy, a plate, a rug underfoot, a dim photograph on the wall across the way--and this collection follows in the footsteps of other authors also obsessed with the boundaries between life and death, the moving and the still, the stone-like book and the vivid stirring within the pages. There are many authors behind Transfer of Qualities, but the major genie of the piece is Henry James whose musings on his own, The Sacred Fount, provided the book's title and direction.
About the Author
Martha Ronk is the Irma and Jay Price professor of English at Occidental College and an award-winning poet. She is the author of nine books of poetry, including Eyetrouble, In a Landscape of Having to Repeat, Nightboat Books, Partially Kept, State of Mind, Vertigo, and Why/Why Not. She lives in Los Angeles.