Modern Poetry: Poems

Title
Modern Poetry: Poems
  • Modern Poetry: Poems by Diane Seuss
Price
$17.00
Available In Store

FINALIST FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
WINNER OF THE 2024 HEARTLAND BOOKSELLERS AWARD FOR POETRY

Diane Seuss's signature voice--audacious in its honesty, virtuosic in its artistry, outsider in its attitude--has become one of the most original in contemporary poetry. Her latest collection takes its title, Modern Poetry, from the first textbook Seuss encountered as a child and the first poetry course she took in college, as an enrapt but ill-equipped student, one who felt poetry was beyond her reach. Many of the poems make use of the forms and terms of musical and poetic craft--ballad, fugue, aria, refrain, coda--and contend with the works of writers overrepresented in textbooks and anthologies and those too often underrepresented. Seuss provides a moving account of her picaresque years and their uncertainties, and in the process, she enters the realm between Modernism and Romanticism, between romance and objectivity, with Keats as ghost, lover, and interlocutor.

In poems of rangy curiosity, sharp humor, and illuminating self-scrutiny, Modern Poetry investigates our time's deep isolation and divisiveness and asks: What can poetry be now? Do poems still have the capacity to mean? "It seems wrong / to curl now within the confines / of a poem," Seuss writes. "You can't hide / from what you made / inside what you made." What she finds there, finally, is a surprising but unmistakable love.
SKU
9781644453186
Modern Poetry: Poems
$17.00
Available In Store
Description

FINALIST FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
WINNER OF THE 2024 HEARTLAND BOOKSELLERS AWARD FOR POETRY

Diane Seuss's signature voice--audacious in its honesty, virtuosic in its artistry, outsider in its attitude--has become one of the most original in contemporary poetry. Her latest collection takes its title, Modern Poetry, from the first textbook Seuss encountered as a child and the first poetry course she took in college, as an enrapt but ill-equipped student, one who felt poetry was beyond her reach. Many of the poems make use of the forms and terms of musical and poetic craft--ballad, fugue, aria, refrain, coda--and contend with the works of writers overrepresented in textbooks and anthologies and those too often underrepresented. Seuss provides a moving account of her picaresque years and their uncertainties, and in the process, she enters the realm between Modernism and Romanticism, between romance and objectivity, with Keats as ghost, lover, and interlocutor.

In poems of rangy curiosity, sharp humor, and illuminating self-scrutiny, Modern Poetry investigates our time's deep isolation and divisiveness and asks: What can poetry be now? Do poems still have the capacity to mean? "It seems wrong / to curl now within the confines / of a poem," Seuss writes. "You can't hide / from what you made / inside what you made." What she finds there, finally, is a surprising but unmistakable love.

Description

FINALIST FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
FINALIST FOR THE 2025 GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE
WINNER OF THE 2024 HEARTLAND BOOKSELLERS AWARD FOR POETRY

Diane Seuss's signature voice--audacious in its honesty, virtuosic in its artistry, outsider in its attitude--has become one of the most original in contemporary poetry. Her latest collection takes its title, Modern Poetry, from the first textbook Seuss encountered as a child and the first poetry course she took in college, as an enrapt but ill-equipped student, one who felt poetry was beyond her reach. Many of the poems make use of the forms and terms of musical and poetic craft--ballad, fugue, aria, refrain, coda--and contend with the works of writers overrepresented in textbooks and anthologies and those too often underrepresented. Seuss provides a moving account of her picaresque years and their uncertainties, and in the process, she enters the realm between Modernism and Romanticism, between romance and objectivity, with Keats as ghost, lover, and interlocutor.

In poems of rangy curiosity, sharp humor, and illuminating self-scrutiny, Modern Poetry investigates our time's deep isolation and divisiveness and asks: What can poetry be now? Do poems still have the capacity to mean? "It seems wrong / to curl now within the confines / of a poem," Seuss writes. "You can't hide / from what you made / inside what you made." What she finds there, finally, is a surprising but unmistakable love.

ISBN
9781644453186
By
Diane Seuss
Publisher
Graywolf Press
Publication Date
November 19, 2024
Binding
Paperback
Item Condition
New
Staff Reviews:

Harriet says: In this latest collection, MODERN POETRY, Diane Seuss pays homage to the first book of poetry she read (later sold to a NYC used bookstore). Each meta poem is technically exquisite, with recurring themes of her scrappy rural MI childhood, trauma, love, and railing against the literary collegiate canon. Read these aloud, the cadence is superb.

— Staff
Language
English
Pages
128
Keywords
Poetry | American | General

Praise for: Modern Poetry: Poems

Rating: 4 - Recommended
Harriet says: In this latest collection, MODERN POETRY, Diane Seuss pays homage to the first book of poetry she read (later sold to a NYC used bookstore). Each meta poem is technically exquisite, with recurring themes of her scrappy rural MI childhood, trauma, love, and railing against the literary collegiate canon. Read these aloud, the cadence is superb.