100 Best Books of 2011, Publishers Weekly 2011 Notable Books, Academy of American Poets From the powerful drama and formal boldness of "The Status Seekers" to the various theories of criticism in "The Nervousness of Yvor Winters," Kathleen Ossip's second collection takes up the crazed threads of modern experience and all its contradictions. Each poem, each new approach is an attempt to extract something concrete from an era not yet past. Yet as the poet probes and wonders, she gradually reveals another narrative, built on strangled emotion and subdued lyricism. The Cold War is jagged and thought-provoking. It questions the origins and premises of contemporary American culture.
100 Best Books of 2011, Publishers Weekly 2011 Notable Books, Academy of American Poets From the powerful drama and formal boldness of "The Status Seekers" to the various theories of criticism in "The Nervousness of Yvor Winters," Kathleen Ossip's second collection takes up the crazed threads of modern experience and all its contradictions. Each poem, each new approach is an attempt to extract something concrete from an era not yet past. Yet as the poet probes and wonders, she gradually reveals another narrative, built on strangled emotion and subdued lyricism. The Cold War is jagged and thought-provoking. It questions the origins and premises of contemporary American culture.
1
Elegy
American History (A Fearsome Solitude)
2
The Status Seekers
The Status Seekers: Richard (Bud) and Joy
3
Document:
4
Confession
The Nervousness of Yvor Winters
Romantic Depot
Upon the Porch
Poetry is Sardonic. Business is Sincere
The Senator and the Medical Intuitive
5
The Deer Path
The Cold War
$3000 marketing and publicity budget
Publicity and promotion through the author's academic contacts
Advertising in Poets & Writers, Writer's Chronicle, Rain Taxi
Review of Books
Newsletter and catalog feature mailed to contacts on Sarabande
database as well as contacts Ossip provides
200 postcards mailed to Ossip's contacts
Internet marketing campaign to include announcement on Sarabande
national listserve as well as review copy mailing to online
journals and blogs with special attention to UK outlets
Kathleen Ossip: Kathleen Ossip is the author of The Search
Engine, which was selected by Derek Walcott for the APR/Honickman
First Book Prize and nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize,
and of Cinephrastics, a chapbook of movie poems. Her poems have
appeared in The Best American Poetry, Paris Review, Kenyon Review,
American Poetry Review, The Washington Post, Fence, The Believer,
and Poetry Review (London). She teaches at The New School in New
York, where she is Editor-at-Large for LIT, and the Poetry Editor
of Women's Studies Quarterly. Ossip was born and raised in Albany,
New York, in a large Italian-Irish family, and now lives outside of
New York City with her husband and daughter.
Ossip’s long-awaited second book is a surprising poetic powerhouse
that interweaves the personal and the political in ways that are as
aesthetically exciting as they are emotionally rich. The book opens
with a jumpy ode on melancholy that takes off, as two of the best
of these poems do, from a hefty quote from a weighty book (in this
poem’s case Karl Menninger’s The Human Mind) and the words In
those days”: Melancholia, we cherished,” writes Ossip, and, later,
The intellect’s/ a pissy thing, a fortress.” Here and elsewhere,
Ossip deftly mixes linguistic registers in poems that blend aspects
of confessional writing, social and literary criticism, and
history. The book’s centerpiece is the traumatized, post-9/11
Document,” a long series of sentences and fragments that attempt
to manage an unshakable feeling of danger: Put space between you
and the attack. Oh fruity word!” Or the centerpiece might be the
essay/ poetic sequence/ tribute called The Nervousness of Yvor
Winters,” which takes off from Winters’s life and work to finally
ask the question, Do we want to understand poems, or do we want
poems that understand us?” The book gains other dimensions from
further sequences and prose fables, such as The Deer Path,” in
which One deer sped by in a small, trucklike vehicle and shouted
FUCK! at me through the open window in an unmistakably cruel way.”
Ossip is about to take the poetry world off guard with what is
surely among the most various, powerful, and representative (of
post-terror America) poetry collections of the past few years.
(May)
Publishers Weekly, starred review
Ossip’s pieces invite our understanding, while her refusal to make
wholes defies it; that defiance, too, belongs to our time.”
Stephen Burt, The Nation
Ms. Ossip conjures delightful and unexpected muses in this
socio-poetical exploration of post-World War II America, taking as
her starting points Karl A. Menninger, who wrote The Human Mind”;
Vance Packard, author of The Status Seekers”; and that scalawag of
orgone energy, Wilhelm Reich. In this shrewd and ambitious work Ms.
Ossip participates in a very old-fashioned sport, parsing the
American mind through the filter of cold war paranoia.
Dana Jennings, The New York Times
A book of impressive breadth, The Cold War, for all its sprawling
forms and unexpected source texts and materials, also communicates
the poet’s emotional relationship to her country and her art.”
American Poet
Ossip’s book is a rebuke to the idea that politics and the personal
can’t be fruitfully combined in poetry.
Anis Shivani, Huffington Post
Ossip’s long-awaited second book is a surprising poetic powerhouse
that interweaves the personal and the political in ways that are as
aesthetically exciting as they are emotionally rich. The book opens
with a jumpy ode on melancholy that takes off, as two of the best
of these poems do, from a hefty quote from a weighty book (in this
poem’s case Karl Menninger’s The Human Mind) and the words “In
those days”: “Melancholia, we cherished,” writes Ossip, and, later,
“The intellect’s/ a pissy thing, a fortress.” Here and elsewhere,
Ossip deftly mixes linguistic registers in poems that blend aspects
of confessional writing, social and literary criticism, and
history. The book’s centerpiece is the traumatized, post-9/11
“Document,” a long series of sentences and fragments that attempt
to manage an unshakable feeling of danger: “Put space between you
and the attack. Oh fruity word!” Or the centerpiece might be the
essay/ poetic sequence/ tribute called “The Nervousness of Yvor
Winters,” which takes off from Winters’s life and work to finally
ask the question, “Do we want to understand poems, or do we want
poems that understand us?” The book gains other dimensions from
further sequences and prose fables, such as “The Deer Path,” in
which “One deer sped by in a small, trucklike vehicle and shouted
FUCK! at me through the open window in an unmistakably cruel way.”
Ossip is about to take the poetry world off guard with what is
surely among the most various, powerful, and representative (of
post-terror America) poetry collections of the past few years.
(May)
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Ossip’s pieces invite our understanding, while her refusal to make
wholes defies it; that defiance, too, belongs to our time.”
—Stephen Burt, The Nation
Ms. Ossip conjures delightful and unexpected muses in this
socio-poetical exploration of post-World War II America, taking as
her starting points Karl A. Menninger, who wrote “The Human Mind”;
Vance Packard, author of “The Status Seekers”; and that scalawag of
orgone energy, Wilhelm Reich. In this shrewd and ambitious work Ms.
Ossip participates in a very old-fashioned sport, parsing the
American mind through the filter of cold war paranoia.
—Dana Jennings, The New York Times
“A book of impressive breadth, The Cold War, for all its sprawling
forms and unexpected source texts and materials, also communicates
the poet’s emotional relationship to her country and her art.”
—American Poet
Ossip’s book is a rebuke to the idea that politics and the personal
can’t be fruitfully combined in poetry.
—Anis Shivani, Huffington Post
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