Raptus

by Joanna Klink

Overview

New from a poet whose "intensity makes the world visible" (Linda Gregg)

"Everywhere, a forceful, scrupulous intelligence is active- a luminous diction, a range of cadences." So has Mark Strand written of the work of Joanna Klink, who has won acclaim for elegant, sensual, and musical poems that "remain alert to the reparations of beauty and song" (Dean Young). The linked poems in Klink's third collection, Raptus, search through a failed relationship, struggling with the stakes of compassion, the violence of the outside world, and the wish to anchor both in something true.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143117728
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/25/2010
Series:	Penguin Poets
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Joanna Klink is the author of four books of poetry, They Are Sleeping, Circadian, Raptus, and Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies, most recently The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry. She has received awards and fellowships from The Rona Jaffe Foundation, Jeannette Haien Ballard, Civitella Ranieri, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at The University of Montana.

Editorial Reviews

What happens when a relationship fails? Klink gets into the nooks and crannies of that question in her third collection. She sinks into every aspect of the life past and present. All of the things you would expect are there--the sense of alienation ("I no longer know what to call you./ Lost-to-me, nested one, night owl" ) and blame ("you have to hold it in mind all at once/ you have to need it enough"). But Klink (Circadian) also revels in surprises: "I suspect there are no gardens in you./ You suspect I am brimming with vast shadows." She has a rhythmic dedication, a sense that every last emotional corner will be examined in its own time and a keen focus aimed as much at herself as at others. As it cycles through need and loss, this book illuminates just how inextricable experiences can be from the people with whom they are shared. This book settles into the injustice of absence and does not fear to ask: "are you paying attention to what passes through you?" (May)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Raptus
 
“In every generation of American poets, there seems to be one collection which, however gently, however tactfully, changes the tone and sets a new direction. John Ashbery’s Rivers and Mountains was one such, and Jorie Graham’s Erosion was another. I am deeply convinced that Raptus very soon will prove to be among that company. Joanna Klink has moved human relationship into a vatic, visionary place, and we are changed.”—Donald Revell
 
“[Klink] has a rhythmic dedication, a sense that every last emotional corner will be examined in its own time and a keen focus aimed as much at herself as at others. As it cycles through need and loss, this book illuminates just how inextricable experiences can be from the people with whom they are shared.”—Publisher’s Weekly
 
“Klink’s most recent collection, Raptus, places the emotional aftermath of a significant breakup against a background of natural, mainly Western, landscapes. But she has been writing about detachment for years, and her work is a record not only of the ecstasy of engagement with the natural world, but also of the mixed and passionately felt consequences of detachment from a noisier, more chaotic world.”—Boston Review

From the Publisher