Title:
Tanya : poems / Brenda Shaughnessy.
ISBN:
9780593535936
9781524712273
Personal Author:
Edition:
First edition.
Publication Information:
New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2023.
©2023
Physical Description:
x, 100 pages ; 24 cm
General Note:
"This is a Borzoi book" -- title page verso.
Contents:
I. Moving Faraway -- Tell Our Mothers We Tell Ourselves the Story We Believe Is Ours -- Impossible Lesbian Love Object(s) -- On The Shaded Line / Lauren Lovette -- Who Sings Whose Songs? -- On Loss of Feathers / Ursula von Rydingsvard -- On Romeu, "My Deer" / Berlinde De Bruyckere -- For the Matter to Mean and the Meaning Matter -- Artist Jessica Rankin -- She Stands -- Poets Are Dying -- Afterlife -- Urv Predicts the Pres(id)ent -- What Have I Done? -- II. Coursework -- III. Tanya -- I. What are we if we stop -- II. "You" -- my friend I made and lost, I did not write -- III. An old spark may stay true, if you want -- IV. If only humor weren't so desperate -- V. Is there an empirical me ruling VI I learned new hell on my own -- VII. If you scratch the surface of writing -- VIII. To fill a page to open a mind -- IX. Your need is yours, I'm not grateful -- X. "Ruin" is "I run" -- XI. That taught me to read other friends later: if they bailed -- XII. Locked in, every key sets two free.
Summary:
"The award-winning poet weaves a tapestry of literary heritage and intimate reflection as she pays tribute to women artists and mentors, and circles the ongoing mysteries of friendship, love, art, and loss. In this powerful gathering of poems about her own "influencers," as well as poems on Dadaist artist Meret Oppenheim and the young choreographer Lauren Lovette, Brenda Shaughnessy dwells in memories of the women who set her on her artistic path. In the title poem, she explores the eternal quality of an intense touchstone relationship with Tanya, about whom she writes, "Everyone's not you to me . . . Worth loving once, why not now?" We all have our own Tanya, and in this book we meet friends, mentors, sisters, lovers, who inhabit a verse classroom where Shaughnessy's passion for literature-forged in her own formative studies, as in the poem "Coursework"-is our teacher. In flowing stair-step tercets, Shaughnessy leads us down into her generative core, exposing moments of spiritual and intellectual awakening, her love of art and the written word, and her sense of the life force itself, which is ignited by the conversation-across time and space-with other women"-- Provided by publisher.
OCLC Number:
on1319083462
Availability:
Apple Valley - Galaxie~1
Eagan - Wescott~1
