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| Waiting for the Light
ISBN: 9780822982470
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / University of Pittsburgh Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Photographie; Photographie; Photography; Photography;
"Do you agree that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice// Why would you think that," asks Ostriker (The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog) in an eerily prophetic moment toward the end of a collection in which she explores politics and people with her characteristic complexity and curiosity. The book is divided into four sections, the first two of which explore the vibrant microcosm of New York as depicted through a series of vignettes. In one, she describes a father whose son is killed in a traffic accident, and in the other she recalls a conversation with a Bangladeshi cab driver who "sighs a long, elegiac sigh,/ like a man who secretly knows how soon/ the world will be under water/ but does not wish to discuss it." In one of the collection's several ghazals, Ostriker skillfully unpacks the multiple meanings and associations of the word "America": "I said One Nation Invisible until corrected/ maybe I was right about America." Ostriker keeps a record of violence, inequality, and despair in the world, yet through it all finds refuge in a world of hope in which "you put on peace every day/ like pulling on a pair of pants." (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Alicia Suskin Ostriker is a major American poet and critic. She is the author of numerous poetry collections, including, most recently, The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog; The Book of Life: Selected Jewish Poems, 1979-2011 ; and The Book of Seventy , winner of the National Jewish Book Award. She has received the Paterson Poetry Prize, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, and has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award, among other honors. Ostriker teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Drew University and is currently a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. |
