Grove Press
Grove Press
Grove Press
“Here is The White Eyelash, proving that a poet can carefully sustain solid inventive work from book to book, poem to poem. . . . Syntax is all: Out of its altering patterns deep insight occurs again and again. Insouciant and ambitious, Kinsolving steers her dappled craft to safe harbor.” –Carol Muske-Dukes, The Los Angeles Times Book Review
An astonishing second collection from the author of the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.
Susan Kinsolving’s first collection, Dailies & Rushes, was hailed as a remarkable debut by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal, and named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In her new work, The White Eyelash, she turns the extremes of her recent experiences into poems of harsh factuality. This dark narrative sequence is highly contrasted by the humor presented in a section called “Light Fare and Oddballs.” Once again, Kinsolving exhibits a daunting range with signature style and substance.
“Here is The White Eyelash, proving that a poet can carefully sustain solid inventive work from book to book, poem to poem. . . . Syntax is all: Out of its altering patterns deep insight occurs again and again. Insouciant and ambitious, Kinsolving steers her dappled craft to safe harbor.” –Carol Muske-Dukes, The Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Kinsolving’s peculiar grace as a poet comes from her tilting, precarious forms, built like card houses, with patience, risk, and balance; but some swift and delightable instinct is always throwing open the window, letting in wild musical figures, mad insistent rhymes, and puns like gusts of air. . . . The images work together to create an impression of quick and fleeting life, erased and changed to ghostliness by time.” –Brian Phillips, Poetry Magazine
“A collection of many moods and the darker feel of the opening sections is carefully and delicately counterbalanced with the lighter and more comical tones of the later sections. . . . Elegant is an apt word for describing both the poetry and the poet [Kingsolving].” –Abigail Leab Martin, The Litchfield County Times Monthly
“Kinsolving displays a love of quick wordplay and skillful internal rhyme. . . . Kinsolving’s range of subject is impressive as is her control of form as these poems sometimes dazzle with their quick-witted pace and fast enjambment that simultaneously pause over moments that separate light from dark as they mark the shades and subtleties of loss.” –Elline Lipkin, Talisman
“[The White Eyelash] finds the poet remembering her trouble mother, concentrating on visual detail or pursuing light-verse forms and verbal games with a demotically highbrow, casual grace. . . . Often organized around colors . . . these poems show a love for beauty and a casual line reminiscent of Eamon Grennan’s.” –Publishers Weekly
Praise for Dailies & Rushes:
“In this brilliant debut, Susan Kinsolving takes what is before our eyes and. . . makes it last.” –Carol Muske, The New York Times Book Review
“Grand and almost terrifying.” –The New Yorker
“Susan Kinsolving beautifully evokes the many moods of [the] quiet hour, touching on both the human landscape and the natural one. With astonishing insight Ms. Kinsolving looks into the heart of hushes.” –Alexander Theroux, The Wall Street Journal
“Susan Kinsolving dazzles with Dailies & Rushes.” –Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair
NEVER ANY MORE INCEPTION THAN THIS
I’ve been where the bougainvillea descends though the lattice roof and the mosaic fountain splashes sunlight over lemon leaves. I’ve been where the caf” is candlelit and crowded with everyone looking interested and desirable. And I’ve been in the library when words washed into brainwaves, rapturous as any turquoise tide shaping a tropical shore. In rain, moonlight, and snow, you’ve been there too. So I ask you, how do we exit this dance floor gracefully? See the ghosts gathering, wanting to cut in, changing the music.
©2003 by Susan Kinsolving. Reprinted with permission from Grove Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved.
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