Coming to Life: Poems

by Joy Ladin

Overview

Ladin continues the journey of self from one gender to the next—a journey of the soul in and out of flesh

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781931357838
Publisher:	Syracuse University Press
Publication date:	01/11/2011
Pages:	102
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Joy Ladin's previous books include Alternatives to History, The Book of Anna, and Transmigration. She is a Fulbright Scholar and an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow. Ladin is currently working on a study of American modernist poetics while writing a memoir called Inside Out: Confessions of a Woman Caught in the Act of Becoming. She is David and Ruth Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College of Yeshiva University.

Table of Contents

GROWING PAIN
Conclusion to a Ritual Marking the Passage from Male to Female
Growing Pain
What It’s Like
Affair
The Future is Trying to Tell Us Something
Something Else You Will Never Know About Me
The Eraser
The Pile of Bricks
The Wind
Winter Rain
The Leopard
Loving Him
Happily Ever After
Spring
Letter
Return Flight
Mizmor L’Todah (Psalm of Thanks)
The Game
DEMOCRACY IS BURNING
Prologue: An Aerial Attack with a Religious Center
Consuming Encounter
Mouth-to-Mouth Resuscitation
Democracy is Burning
An Election
Evidence
Love
Vital Signs
Death
Epilogue: The Heart of the Heartland
SURVIVAL GUIDE
Today’s Forecast:
Daylilies
On the Train to Exeter
Passing the Belgian Ambassador’s Residence in Jerusalem
Natural Disasters
The Body of Life
Now and Then
Door
Dozing to Waterfall
Seed
Survival Guide
ANSWER
Crèche
The Grave of Craving
Medallion Inscribed with the Hebrew Alphabet in the Shape of a Flame
God is Beating
Touching the Tree of Life
Answer
Va-yera
COMING TO LIFE
Coming to Life
Hurting
Mind
The Slopes of Becoming
Girl in a Bottle
Coming True
Kiss Everything
Even If You Want
Fairy Tale Ending
Thickening

What People are Saying About This

Herbert Leibowitz

"Ladin draws the reader into a world of harsh truths, uncanny beauty, inspired erudition, ironic wit, and cadenced music.... imagination rules, wedding poetic forms to unflinching meditations on human suffering, terror, love, and unbearable loss. Despite the ubiquity of evil and death in her poems, there is, in Yeats's words, 'a gaiety transfiguring all that dread.'"

Editorial Reviews

Ladin draws the reader into a world of harsh truths, uncanny beauty, inspired erudition, ironic wit, and cadenced music. . . . Imagination rules, wedding poetic forms to unflinching meditations on human suffering, terror, love, and unbearable loss. Despite the ubiquity of evil and death in her poems, there is, in Yeats's words, 'a gaiety transfiguring all that dread.'"

Herbert Leibowitz