The Book of Seventy

by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

Overview

Alicia Ostriker seizes the opportunity to take us where too few poets have been able to take us: into a domain of what our fabulists like to call the "golden years." as we live longer, we become inevitably curious about the actual texture of these late years, curious about what happens in the soul. Out of that curiosity is a new kind of poetry born, an elderstile that has passion and irony, wisdom, folly, clarity and tenderness. In her keen engagement with the self and the world, Ostriker offers us a voice and a perspective that explore the territory of seventy and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822990956
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	10/25/2009
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	88
File size:	239 KB

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Contents I Approaching Seventy Stream-Entering Insomnia Lymphoma The Surgeon In Sickness and Health Neurologist Family: Attempted Speech West Fourth Street Late Winter Rain II Desire and Joy The Married Man The Plateau Our Dead Friend Sonnetina: The Storm Heaven Honey of Generation III The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog Apollo to Marsyas Persephone to Demeter Kali in the Sackler Wing Laïs to Aphrodite Artemis to Aphrodite Demeter to Persephone Lord Krishna to the Summer Handyman Gaia Regards Her Children Prayer in Autumn IV Drone Born in the USA Listening to Public Radio Laundry The Snowfall Two Poems A Theme for Charles Ives Dear God Almanac Ars Poetica: Three Poems Zeno Notes Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

In this passionate, thoughtful collection, Ostriker approaches aging, politics, myth, and sensuality. With wisdom, she lyrically questions the world and the death and beauty that are a part of it.”
—American Poet

“There’s a forthrightness to even the most difficult realizations in Ostriker’s work, born of fidelity to craft and emotional truth, making them not only welcome, but necessary. . . . Through the elastic instrument of one voice as it grapples, ponders, digs, almost revels in ndissonance, and ultimately mellows, these poems mae a kind of tough peace.”
—Pleiades

“Here is a hard, obdurate, elusive sort of beauty. Alicia Ostriker is not only one of our very best poets but one of our most crucial.”
—Joyce Carol Oates

“I found these poems to get stronger, stranger, more religious and more beautiful with each reading. I urge you to spend time with them and ‘drink their bliss.’”
—Jewish Book World

“Alicia Ostriker is a fool for beauty. She says so on 'West Fourth Street.'  She is also a fool for wisdom but, like a smart sage, she does it slant. I'm shocked by these poems, shocked by how good they are. How many skins has she shed to get here? Just take a look at a short poem called 'Dear God' or 'Born in the USA' or fifteen others. Amazing.”
—Gerald Stern

“Ostriker takes us into a domain of what some like to call the ‘golden yerars.’ As we live longer, we become inevitably curious about the actual texture of these late years, curious about what happens in the soul. Out of that curiosity is born a new kind of poetry. Ostriker offers us a voice and a perspective that explore the territory of seventy and behond.”
—Shofar

“The Book of Seventy  will speak to everyone: Alicia Ostriker's honest voice, her humor, her wisdom, her gutsiness; her scholarly, longing mind; her knowing body: 'my mind is a cervix / I can imagine anything'; and from the first page to the last, her long-recognized courage in facing down—even welcoming—just about everything.”
—Jean Valentine

“Many of the poems in this book fill me with awe and pleasure. . . . Readings these poems felt like having a conversation with a friend who is witty, learned, bawdy, compassionate, and a hell of a good poet. If this is ‘The Book of Seventy,’ bring on ‘The Book of Eighty.’”
—Poet Lore

From the Publisher