Mezzanine: Poems

by Zoe Hitzig

Overview

In her striking collection of poems, Zoë Hitzig investigates how we seek certitude, power, and domination over the natural world and one another. Hitzig brings a scientific rigor to her searing lyricism, as well as a raucous energy and willingness to allow her work to dwell in states of uncertainty and precariousness. The result is an original voice that is incisive and unsparing, but also passionate and tender. Her poems probe the authority of language and logic, questioning the sovereignty of the technological, economic, legal, and political systems that mediate our lives. 

Urgent in its creation of a new way of looking at our social and natural worlds, Mezzanine is an insightful and visceral debut collection from a poet whose work is poised to leave a lasting mark.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062977465
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/18/2021
Pages:	96
Sales rank:	1,079,005
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Zoë Hitzig is a poet and PhD candidate in economics at Harvard University. Her poetry has appeared in the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, New Statesman, Boston Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. Her writing about poetry has appeared in BOMB and Prac Crit. Mezzanine is her first book.

Table of Contents

I Looked on My Right Hand and Beheld 3

The Lotus on Marina Bay Speaks 5

Object at the Department Store Speaks 7

The Tamping Iron Speaks 8

The Levee Speaks 9

Silent Auction 11

The Cryptographer Speaks 13

On Atrazine 14

Stylized Facts 16

How We Programmed the Apocalypse 18

Silent Auction 19

Huttonian Theory of Earth 23

On Styrofoam 24

Triple Witching 26

War of the Currents 27

Generalized Method of Moments 29

Trial for the New Aubade 30

1st Trial for the New Aubade 31

2nd Trial for the New Aubade 32

Fragments from the Imagined Epic: The Song of Have Blue 33

The War Gone Wrong Room 37

Objectivity as Blanket 38

Silent Auction 39

Pawn Slip 40

The List 41

Proxy Means 43

Division Day 45

Fragments from the Imagined Epic: The Island of Stone Money 59

Difference Engine 67

Pernkopf Atlas (I) 69

Pernkopf Atlas (II) 73

Gesture Atlas 75

Notes 79

Acknowledgments 83

Editorial Reviews

"Do we sound like robots or do robots sound like us? In poems of conscience, intelligence, and wit, Zoë Hitzig presents arguments in support of both possibilities. Mostly, throughout Mezzanine's many ingenious premises and modes of address, what I hear is an ageless stark wisdom calling us to decide who and what we are, and what we are willing to heed."  — Tracy K. Smith

"In Mezzanine, we confront a world of diminishing returns—yet with powerful poetic yield."  — Carol Muske-Dukes

"Zoë Hitzig's exquisitely engineered Mezzanine lands the reader in a nether place of talking commodities, misplaced agency, category mistakes, and radical dysphoria. Into such dire circumstances Hitzig dives headfirst, feverish, an investigator who grapples with reality by recreating it from the inside out. In other words, she is a poet, and an extraordinary one at that...Here and there, and just in time, Mezzanine reminds us what there is to love in the human, and what it feels like to to feel it's still too soon to give up."  — Timothy Donnelly, author of The Problem of Many

"[An] astonishing literary debut...This poet indicts all of us for historical crimes against the first person. at the edge of extinction, she carries on her inquest into identity, however fugitive its traces may be."  — Srikanth Reddy, author of Voyager

From the Publisher

"[An] astonishing literary debut...This poet indicts all of us for historical crimes against the first person. at the edge of extinction, she carries on her inquest into identity, however fugitive its traces may be." 

Srikanth Reddy

"Zoë Hitzig's exquisitely engineered Mezzanine lands the reader in a nether place of talking commodities, misplaced agency, category mistakes, and radical dysphoria. Into such dire circumstances Hitzig dives headfirst, feverish, an investigator who grapples with reality by recreating it from the inside out. In other words, she is a poet, and an extraordinary one at that...Here and there, and just in time, Mezzanine reminds us what there is to love in the human, and what it feels like to to feel it's still too soon to give up." 

Timothy Donnelly

"In Mezzanine, we confront a world of diminishing returns—yet with powerful poetic yield." 

Carol Muske-Dukes

"Do we sound like robots or do robots sound like us? In poems of conscience, intelligence, and wit, Zoë Hitzig presents arguments in support of both possibilities. Mostly, throughout Mezzanine's many ingenious premises and modes of address, what I hear is an ageless stark wisdom calling us to decide who and what we are, and what we are willing to heed." 

Tracy K. Smith