Solve for Desire - Poems

Caitlin Bailey

Beschreibung

A debut poetry collection exploring the real lives of siblings Georg and Grete Trakl while addressing themes of desire, addiction, loss, and absence. Georg Trakl is one of the most celebrated poets of the early twentieth century. Less is known about his sister, Grete: also gifted, also addicted to drugs, and dead by her own hand three years after Georg’s overdose. But in Solve for Desire—selected by Srikanth Reddy as the winner of the 2017 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry—Caitlin Bailey summons Grete from the shadows. At once sensual and acidic, obsessive and bereft, the Grete of these poems is a fairy-tale sister leaving “missives dropped around the city, crumbs / for your ghost.” Can one person be addicted to another? Can two souls be twinned, and where does that leave the physical? How do we solve for desire when the object we adore disappears—and how does the poet solve and resolve the past, its wounds and its absences? “Each time I write your name,” Bailey writes, “a key / turns somewhere in a lock.” Like the “perfect red burst” of poppies and of blood, these poems are a blooming, keening exploration of desire between brother and sister, poet and subject, the living and the dead.Praise for Solve for Desire “The work of a poet who sings, boldly, across the distances between us.” —Srikanth Reddy “A sobering look at desire, addiction, loss, and absence in this debut collection of short, lyric poems that are by turns lush and understated, lofty and plainspoken. . . . She performs a kind of feminist resuscitation of the lesser-known Grete, focusing on small moments of quiet, grief, lust, and memory, and fleshing out a story that is still disputed” —Publishers Weekly “This precarious, satisfyingly disjointed debut collection of poetry captures the spirit of the [Trakl] siblings. . . . Bailey’s brilliantine lyrics shine brightest when the siblings’ characters are wrought in full relief.” —Booklist

Verfügbar seit: 12.12.2017.

Drucklänge: 96 Seiten.

Poesie & Theater

Weitere Bücher, die Sie mögen werden

The Poetry Of HP Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft

There are rather few masters of horror writing out of the many who write horror.  HP Lovecraft has achieved fame because his work is of a standard of excellence that few if any can rival. Here we concentrate on his poems that show a different side of his nature at times but allow him to use his macabre tastes to enrich his lines and ideas with the shiver of the night.  Born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island he was a prodigious youth but a sickly one. Raised mainly by his Grandfather and Aunts at 14 he contemplated suicide on the death of his grandfather and the crushing financial blow that brought to himself and his mother.  A set of literary spats in a newspaper brought him attention away from his poetry writings.  But until the last decade of his life the works for which we is so well know did not arrive.   That last decade, writing again in Providence was prolific but with little income his life downgraded rented house by rented house and in 1936, often malnourished he was diagnosed with cancer and succumbed to it the following year.

Zum Buch

The Ice Palace - Author of the...

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota into an upper-middle class family. Whilst his mother was pregnant with him, his two young sisters tragically died. Fitzgerald once said this was when his destiny as a writer was ordained.

His intelligence and talent was recognised from an early age, with his first story, about a detective being published in the school magazine when he was just 13.

In 1913 he enrolled at Princeton but his devotion to his own literary pursuits resulted in him leaving and, rather bizarrely, joining the Army. In 1918, stationed at Fort Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama he met and became infatuated and then inseparable from Zelda Sayre. Initially though she refused to marry him but with the success of ‘This Side of Paradise’, the fame and the flow of money enabled them both to begin a gilded life. For them this was The Jazz Age. For Fitzgerald he was already an alcoholic.

He continued to write with great mastery and the titles of his novels and many of his 164 short stories are household names. The Great Gatsby, often cited as The Great American Novel was published to mixed reviews. As America moved from the Great Depression to the slaughter of the Second World War his works and himself were seen as far too entwined with the decadent twenties. The world had moved on and he hadn’t.

Further tragedy was never far from his life. Zelda after years of erratic and now intolerable behaviour was committed to an institution in 1936. His own sales began to decline and he became a hack for hire in Hollywood, dependent on increasing amounts of booze and the weekly pay check. His drunken state had often resulted in arrest or hospitalisation, further imperiling his talents. Despite his contribution to many MGM films he received only one credit.

The end came all too soon for one of America’s greatest ever writers. On 21st December 1940, at only 44 years of age in Hollywood, F Scott Fitzgerald succumbed to a heart attack.

One of Fitzgerald’s short story gems is ‘The Ice Palace’. A Southern girl wants ‘to live where things happen on a grand scale’. She is engaged to a Yankee but on their visit to The Ice Palace attraction life reveals a very different destiny for her.

Zum Buch

One of Us Buried

Johanna Craven

I am surrounded by men, as I was the day I arrived in this place ... We step into the courtroom together, though we are anything but equals... 
In 1806, a fateful decision sends Eleanor Marling from the salons of London to a prison ship bound for New South Wales. She is put to work at the female factory of Parramatta, where the women’s only hope of food and lodgings is to offer their bodies to the settlement’s men.  
Nell is given shelter by Lieutenant Blackwell, a brooding soldier to whom she is inexplicably drawn. Despite warnings from the other women, Blackwell’s motives seem decent, and beneath the roof of a military officer, Nell sees a chance to become more than just a convict woman sent to the factory to be forgotten.  
But tensions are high in New South Wales, with the young colony teetering on the edge of a convict rebellion. And as Nell treads a dangerous line between obedience and power, she learns the role of a factory lass is to remain silent – or face a walk to the gallows.  
Inspired by true events that would shape the experience of Australian women for centuries to come.

Zum Buch

Farewell -- But Whenever --

Thomas Moore

Librivox volunteers bring you seven readings of Farewell! – But Whenever – by Thomas Moore.  This is the fortnightly poetry project for October 12, 2014.

Zum Buch

My Lady April

Ernest Dowson

Ernest Christopher Dowson  was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer, often associated with the Decadent movement. - Summary by Wikipedia

Zum Buch

October (Dunbar version)

Paul Laurence Dunbar

LibriVox volunteers bring you 19 different recordings of October by Paul Laurence Dunbar. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of October 7th, 2007.

Zum Buch