Without

by Maxine Chernoff

Overview

The series of poems in Maxine Chernoff's Without are elegiac brushstrokes, each somewhat feathery and brushing in more than one direction, which creates tension and unexpected arrivals as well as departures: someone or something is missing. Parts of the world are wavering and parts have disappeared. What remains is treated in the subtle management of the lines without a hint of punctuation, which allows for "waves" of attention, as meaning rises and subsides. The emotional impact is powerful, as are the recognitions, such as "when darkness loses / its waiting mirror / and tuning forks / stand in for solace" and "readers asleep /mouthing their dreams / fears of whispering / become a creed / until life blurs / like any lens /that fails at attention." There's a sense of meaning passing with the solidity and darkness of time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781848611962
Publisher:	Shearsman Books
Publication date:	01/15/2012
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Maxine Chernoff is the author of six books of fiction and fourteen books of poems, most recently HERE (Counterpath, 2014), WITHOUT (Shearsman Books, 2012) and TO BE READ IN THE DARK (Omnidawn Publishing, 2011). She is the recipient of a 2013 NEA Fellowship in Poetry and, with Paul Hoover, for their translation of Friedrich Holderlin, the 2009 PEN USA Translation Award. She is the editor of the journal NEW AMERICAN WRITING and chair of the creative writing department at San Francisco State University.