The Volcano and After: Selected and New Poems 2002-2019

by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

Overview

Alicia Suskin Ostriker’s passionate voice has long been acknowledged as a vital force in American poetry. From urgent spiritual quest to biting political satire, from elegy to comedy, from celebration of the city street and the world “as a paradise might be / if we had eyes to see,” to the “crack in earth . . . crack in her mind,” from brilliant evocations of art and music to mother-daughter wrestlings, Ostriker’s poetry rings with insistence on beauty and truth. Drawing from six of her previous books, and highlighting a sequence of bold new poems exploring the challenges and absurdities of aging, The Volcano and After is a masterpiece for our time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822987819
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	09/08/2020
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	214
File size:	4 MB

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 The Unmasking Preface the volcano sequence (2002) Prelude: Volcano Fugue: Mother The Yearning Psalm (excerpt) Theodicy: A Dialogue Call And Response Our Mothers: A Correspondence The Shekhinah as Mute Nevertheless She Moves Bruriah The Volcano Breathes Psalm (excerpt) I Decide to Call You “Being” Seasonal Interlude: The Avenue of the Americas Memory About to Sell Your House Rewind Physical Examination Memory No Heaven (2005) Vocation Birdcall Pickup Liking It Crosstown May Rain, Princeton Running Out the Clock The Speech of the Creature Mid-February Caravaggio: The Painting of Force and Violence The Kiss of Judas Rembrandt: Work and Love Cosi Fan Tutte: Of Desire and Delight Schumann, Op. 16: The Greater Happiness An Album of Chinese Fan Paintings A Walker in the City I A Voice at the Rally The Window, at the Moment of Flame Poem Sixty Years after Auschwitz Hunger Elegy before the War (excerpts) Fix Daffodils The Book of Seventy (2009) Approaching Seventy (excerpts) Insomnia Honey of Generation Late Winter Rain West Fourth Street The Plateau Our Dead Friend Persephone to Demeter Demeter to Persephone Gaia Regards Her Children Lord Krishna to the Summer Handyman Born in the USA Laundry Dear God At the Revelation Restaurant (2010) The Bird Isla Mujeres Love I Love II (Summertime) Love III Love IV Ars Poetica: Seven Poems The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog (2014) The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog Deer Walk Upon Our Mountains The Drink Triptych Song The Wind That Blows Through Me Soften and Melt April In Every Life Anger I: Gray Cement The Fear Triptych They Speak of Race Ridiculous Awakening I Want to Live The Sorrow Triptych Anger II: The Rape In War Time Paw on Your Lap Brightness Falls from the Air Waiting for the Light (2017) August Morning, Upper Broadway The Light How Fortunate the Boy Mannahatta The First Snowfall The Glory of Cities Bangladesh: The Driver Cinco de Mayo Biking to the George Washington Bridge Ghazal: The Minimum Wage, 2014 A Walker in the City II Waiting for the Light Ghazal: America Afghanistan: The Raped Girl Q&A: Insurance Making a Meal of Them Dare I Call You Cousin Temblor The Liberal Arts To Charlie, on His Poetry Underground Ghazal: America the Beautiful Q&A: Reality Approaching Eighty: New Poems (2010–2019) What the Butterfly Is Thinking November Eleventh: Two Poems Approaching Eighty, Biking Up Prospect The Transition: Five Poems They Are Always Asking Thirst Approaching Eighty: Six Poems Reading Dan Beachy-Quick, Wonderful Investigations Naming the Thirst Again The Sea My Mother Refused To Weed Mother in the Assisted Living Old Woman at the River A Season of Acid Rain Utopian Rouffignac The Death of the Swan, and Other Questions The Rose Tree The Laptop Also Is Dying The Words When I Wrote Them Biking Riverside Drive Again Eleanor, 1884–1962: Five Poems January 15, 1991: The First Gulf War After Inauguration (excerpt) Coda: Sutra Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

This volume offers an engaging look at Ostriker’s long and rich career.

Publishers Weekly

Alicia Ostriker continues to grapple with and celebrate the life of a woman—wife, mother, lover, friend, teacher, and citizen of the world. Because of her age, as well as the precariousness of our times, Ostriker seems to speak even more forcefully, as if a confrontation with ultimate loss has engendered a vibrant flowering. Her devotion to the physical world—to what gives beauty and value to our lives, to pleasure—for example, her candid and brilliant explorations of sex in old age. At 80, she proclaims, she hasn’t had her last sex—has always made her the rarest gift to readers who, like me, rely on poetry for example. And we have so few examples at this age! Elder stateswoman Ostriker forges ahead, more audacious and sure-footed than ever, invigorated by her task to take us with her all the way.

Toi Derricotte

These capacious poems are smart, passionate, witty, acutely observant, heart-stabbing. They contain multitudes, embracing both ‘hot beauty’ and ‘thick and magnificent rage,’ ‘the impulse to destroy’ and ‘the body...keen for pleasure again,’ along with a bounty of other precise nuances of thought and perception. Alicia Ostriker binds together the contradictions of our contemporary lives in an insistent music that does what all real poetry does—‘it becomes true.’

Ellen Bass

In a voice absolutely her own—wild, earthy, irreverent, full of humor and surprise—Ostriker takes on nothing less than what it feels like to be alive.

Joan Larkin

These capacious poems are smart, passionate, witty, acutely observant, heart-stabbing. They contain multitudes, embracing both ‘hot beauty’ and ‘thick and magnificent rage,’ ‘the impulse to destroy’ and ‘the body . . . keen for pleasure again,’ along with a bounty of other precise nuances of thought and perception. Alicia Ostriker binds together the contradictions of our contemporary lives in an insistent music that does what all real poetry does—‘it becomes true.’”—Ellen Bass


 

“Alicia Ostriker continues to grapple with and celebrate the life of a woman—wife, mother, lover, friend, teacher, and citizen of the world. Because of her age, as well as the precariousness of our times, Ostriker seems to speak even more forcefully, as if a confrontation with ultimate loss has engendered a vibrant flowering. Her devotion to the physical world—to what gives beauty and value to our lives, to pleasure—for example, her candid and brilliant explorations of sex in old age. At 80, she proclaims, she hasn’t had her last sex—has always made her the rarest gift to readers who, like me, rely on poetry for example. And we have so few examples at this age!  Elder stateswoman Ostriker forges ahead, more audacious and sure-footed than ever, invigorated by her task to take us with her all the way.”—Toi Derricotte
 

“In a voice absolutely her own—wild, earthy, irreverent, full of humor and surprise—Ostriker takes on nothing less than what it feels like to be alive.”  —Joan Larkin

“This volume offers an engaging look at Ostriker’s long and rich career.” —Publishers Weekly
 

From the Publisher