| Title | : | Gravesend (New California Poetry) (Volume 36) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0520273176 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780520273177 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 96 |
| Publication | : | First published March 17, 2012 |
The poems in Gravesend explore ghosts as instances of collective grief and guilt, as cultural constructs evolved to elide or to absorb a given society’s actions, as well as, at times, to fill the gaps between such actions and the desires and intentions of its individual citizens. Tracing the changing nature of the ghostly in the western world from antiquity to today, the collection focuses particularly on the ghosts created by the European expansion of the 16th through 20th centuries, using the town of Gravesend, the seaport at the mouth of the Thames through which countless emigrants passed, as an emblem of theambiguous threshold between one life and another, in all the many meanings of that phrase.
Gravesend (New California Poetry) (Volume 36) Reviews
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This falls perfectly at the intersection of experimental/lyric poetry and gothic horror. I enjoyed it more than I can even say. Very highly recommended, along with Emma Bolden's Maleficae, Joshua Gendron's Weirde Sister, and Swensen's book Goest. If anyone can recommend any other books along these lines, I would love to hear them.
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The first recorded ghost story dates back to 1682 in Newcastle, New Hampshire and has been told and retold and transformed until it looks like a completely different person from the original version. Cole Swensen in her poetry collection, Gravesend, revisits the genre of the ghost story. Divided in three parts, curiously with questions as titles: One – have you ever seen a ghost, two – how did Gravesend get it’s name, three – what do you think a ghost is?
The work is possessed and haunting, and I highly recommend reading it. -
Everything about this book is wonderful.
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"Ghosts
are houses. (The places we exceed ourselves can live.) And every house
is a guest. I live in an old one. I watch it move. “I am moved,” I say
at inappropriate times."
Inspirational.
To re-read later. -
I think I didn’t devote enough thought to truly appreciate the depth of this work as I was confused by the changes between the interviews, poetry, and historical accounts. It was a fascinating piece though and I will definitely be returning to ponder more.
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so beautiful, so soft.
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absolutely stunning.
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It will hover around in rooms. Held of Children, paint out by the sky. Swensen’s code for language and the external is mesmerizing. Beautiful ghosts.
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Fuck i love you
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http://www.full-stop.net/2012/10/19/r...
Review by Sam Rowe
Cole Swensen’s new collection of poetry, Gravesend, is a meditation on ghosts and ghost stories. It comes on the heels of several strong offerings from Swensen, a prolific fixture in the American poetry scene, that have taken something of an archival (and if I may say so, a delightfully nerdy) turn, dealing with such figures as André le Notre, William Kent, and John Rocque (eighteenth-century cartographers and landscape designers, in case that wasn’t obvious). Gravesend, for its part, maintains a thematic focus on the titular town in the U.K., situated at the mouth of the Thames and as such historically a last point of contact with terra firma for Britons departing to the continent or the new world. For Swensen, the geographical liminality of Gravesend, site of departure for journeys to the Great Beyond, makes it a perfect foil for accessing the broader theme of the book: ghost stories. Gravesend deals with ghosts in all their forms, as they appear in stories by Wilkie Collins, Daniel Defoe, Henry James, and Sheridan la Fanu and in transcriptions of conversations with friends, other poets, and actual residents of Gravesend. If that sounds likes a lot to take in, it’s for a good reason — Gravesend never manages to dance effortlessly around its archive in the way that Ours and Greensward (the books with all those eighteenth-century gardeners and map-makers) do. The interviews in particular are a bit baggy. However, even if Gravesend isn’t Swensen’s most deft offering to date, this doesn’t stop it from offering moments of her trademark quiet virtuosity. (Gravesend is, alas, likely to be one of the last releases from UC press’ venerable “New California Poetry” series, which is being suspended due to the state’s fiscal crisis.)
Read more here:
http://www.full-stop.net/2012/10/19/r... -
Not my thing...
