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Vermeer in Hell: Poems

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Vermeer in Hell: Poems

Paperback

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Paperback
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Overview

Through the paintings of Vermeer, Michael White explores new landscapes and transforms familiar ones in this extraordinary new collection of poems.

Through the paintings of Vermeer, Michael White explores new landscapes and transforms familiar ones in this extraordinary new collection of poems. This captivating masterwork transports us across eras and continents, from Confederate lynchings to the bombing of Dresden, through its lyrical inhabitations of some of Vermeer’s most revered paintings, each one magically described and renewed. More than mere ekphrasis, Michael White explores the transformative possibilities of great art in his fourth collection, winner of the 2013 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780892554362
Publisher:	Persea Books
Publication date:	10/03/2014
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.10(d)

About the Author

Michael White is the author of four collections of poetry and a memoir, Travels in Vermeer (Persea 2015), and has published widely in respected periodicals, including The Paris Review, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Western Humanities Review, and the Best American Poetry. His most recent collection is Persea’s Vermeer in Hell, winner of the Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award. White teaches poetry and is presently chair of the Creative Writing department at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

Coup 3

On Highland Road 9

View of Delft 10

The Girl With a Pearl Earring 12

Anniversary 15

Officer with Laughing Girl 17

Out Back 19

Bioluminescence 20

Girl With a Red Hat 21

Woman Holding a Balance 22

The Moles worth Group 25

The Little Street 26

Woman in Blue Reading a Letter 29

The Milkmaid 31

Anne Frank's Tree 36

Woman Holding a Pearl Necklace 38

III

Vermeer in Hell 41

Notes 55

Acknowledgments 57

About the Author 58

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

12/01/2014
White (Re-Entry), the 2013 winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor's Choice Award, offers a sonically lush, ekphrasis-centric fourth collection conjured from the paintings of Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. He describes with unmistakable pleasure Vermeer's exquisite palettes: "then lean// back into the breathless/ hush of pearl again,// where everything about her burns a different shade/ of blue: her lunar morning// jacket, rumpled folds of the linen tablecloth,/ the granular blue air." These descriptions, though charming, well-crafted, and well-textured, offer little insight other than placing the reader into a painting's context. Only when White attempts to reach past the canvas towards the ineffable does the poetry break free of the paintings from which they originate. White flirts with the edge of this "unseen sea" when he describes an officer flirting with a girl: "her wren-like self, her awkwardly rouged lips/ & cheeks—& this is my favorite part—her lazy/ right eye drifting a little out, beyond." White asks us to look hard, not only at the paintings he loves—with their fascinating subjects wearing satin gowns with a "gold-foil sheen," or pouring a rivulet of milk—but also at the beauty in the everyday and the complex histories we share. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 02/01/2015
"One eye sees, the other feels," Paul Klee said about art, and the ekphrastic poems making up more than half this fourth collection (after Re-Entry) share this duality. Colorado Prize winner White richly describes Vermeer's paintings so that we experience their colors, their textures, and even the daily lives of their subjects in the present although they were painted centuries ago: "her nostrils flare. Meanwhile the rest of her face// dissolves, as in a convex lens, & only/ her mouth…yes, only/ her mouth seems real to us, but real enough// to speak to us through the shadowy seas of love." The closing poem, "Vermeer in Hell" is an 11-page, multipart work that combines homage to A Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window with historical details about the brutal firebombing of Dresden. The third section, prose poetry that describes the bombing itself, gets too involved in numerical counts, but the fourth section reverts to lyrics to tell the amazing tale of an elderly Jewish couple separated during the bombing: "All night he rode this spit/ of rock & danced to the left, or else to the right,/ as the bones of the Elbflorenz turned white-hot// & collapsed in torrents of sparks." VERDICT White translates his passion for Dutch painting into dynamic, striking poems. A book not to be missed.—Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN

Library Journal

Vermeer in Hell: Poems

Vermeer in Hell: Poems

Paperback

Paperback

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

Customer Reviews

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

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Customer Reviews