No Heaven.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ostriker, Alicia.

Series:

Pitt poetry series.

Pitt Poetry Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American poetry--20th century.

American poetry.

Women poets, American.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005.

Summary:

Alicia Suskin Ostriker's voice has long been acknowledged as a major force in American poetry. In No Heaven, her eleventh collection, she takes a hint from John Lennon's "Imagine" to wrestle with the world as it is: "no hell below us, / above us only sky." It is a world of cities, including New York, London, Jerusalem, and Berlin, where the poet can celebrate pickup basketball, peace marches, and the energy of graffiti. It is also a world of families, generations coming and going, of love, love affairs, and friendship. Then it is a world full of art and music, of Rembrandt and Bonnard, Mozart and Brahms. Finally, it is a world haunted by violence and war. No Heaven rises to a climax with elegies for Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated by an Israeli zealot, and for the poet's mother, whose death is experienced in the context of a post-9/11 impulse to destroy that seems to seduce whole nations. Yet Ostriker's ultimate stance is to "Try to praise the mutilated world, " as the poet Adam Zagajewski has counseled. At times lyric, at times satiric, Ostriker steadfastly pursuesin No Heaven her poetics of ardor, a passion for the here and now that has chastened and consoled her many devoted readers.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Vocation

I. Here and Now

Birdcall

Bus Station

Correspondence

Brooklyn Twilight

Pickup

One-Minded

Liking It

Crosstown

Cigarettes

In the Fory-Fifth Year of Marriage

Running out the Clock

Wilderness

The Speech of the Creature

What You Cannot Remember, What You Cannot Know

May Rain, Princeton

Baby Carriages

What Is Needed After Food

Ciy Through Which Time Rushes Like Water

Poem Beginning with a Line by Rumi

II. Archival

Normal Light

Lexer of Inquiry

He Gets Depressed Whenever We Argue

The Idea of Making Love

Another Imaginary Voyage

Extended Sonnet

Misery and Frustration

Mid-February

Coastal Dawn

III. Material Density

Wooden Virgin with Child

The Kiss of Judas

The Birth of Venus

Caravaggio: The Painting of Force and Violence

RVR: Work and Love

Asylum: Corot at the Ville D'Avray

Homage to Redon

Bonnard Retrospective

Cosi Fan Tuxe: Of Desire and Delight

Schumann Op. 16: The Greater Happiness

Janacek, String Quartet # 1

Ravel Piano Trio

The Fauré Requiem

An Album of Chinese Fan Paintings

IV. Tearing the Poem Up

Squirrels

A Walker in the Ciy

A Voice at the Rally

Three Women

The Othello Sarabande, or: The Occupation

Elegy for Allen

Tearing the Poem Up and Eating It

Divrei

Fix

The Window at the Moment of Flame

From the Moon

Poem Sixy Years After Auschwitz

Hunger

Elegy before the War

Dafodils

Coda

Coda: Into the Street

Notes

Acknowledgments.

Notes:

Preliminaries omitted.

ISBN:

9780822979890

0822979896