{"product_id":"spell-isbn-9780143133520","title":"Spell","description":"\u003cb\u003eA new collection of provocative work from the author of \u003ci\u003eOr To Begin Again\u003c\/i\u003e, a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in Poetry\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnn Lauterbach is one of America's most inventive poets, acclaimed for her fierce, sensuous, and intellectually charged work. In her tenth collection, \u003ci\u003eSpell\u003c\/i\u003e, Lauterbach activates the many meanings of \"spell\": her sense that the world is under a spell from which it must awaken, to spells of passing weather, to her desire to spell out life's difficulties and wonders, and how sin-gle words (and their etymologies) might inform and enlighten our contemporary condition. In short poems, poem sequences, and a series of \"Conversations with Evening,\" Lauterbach calls upon all her imaginative resources to locate a new hybrid poetics of reality, with wit, urgency, and candor.\u003cb\u003ePraise for Ann Lauterbach’s most recent collection, \u003ci\u003eUnder the Sign\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “For almost four decades, Lauterbach has kept asking, in poem after allusive poem, how wisdom arrives, how senses make sense, how art matters and happens—and what love, and loss, have to do with it . . . her poems ‘make nothing happen,’ except a way to think hard—and to hold out hope for thought to occur.” —\u003ci\u003eBoston Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “As a poet, Lauterbach is nothing if not versatile in content and form. . . . Her register is resolutely multivalent. . . . She challenges and enchants.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Rumpus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Enacting insight, intuition, elegance, and humor, these poems are, in a phrase coined by fellow individualist Frederick Seidel, ‘daggers that sing.’” —\u003ci\u003eRain Taxi\u003c\/i\u003eAnn Lauterbach was born and grew up in New York City. She has been since 1992 co-chair of writ-ing in the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, where she is also Ruth and David Schwab II Professor of Languages and Literature. Among the recognitions of her work are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (1986) and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (1993). She is the author of nine previous collections of poetry, as well as three collec-tions of prose, including \u003ci\u003eThe Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience.\u003c\/i\u003e She lives in German-town, New York.PAUSE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe arc of distance is partial. \u003cbr\u003eA continuum belated us, like the slow-​­motion \u003cbr\u003espit of a shaman. Friendships went south. We could not \u003cbr\u003ename our freedoms, only the pause between days \u003cbr\u003ein which all matters of belonging \u003cbr\u003edensely accrued, then \u003cbr\u003escattered. I could not wake up. She wore \u003cbr\u003ea tiara and spoke rapidly \u003cbr\u003einto the swollen air, \u003cbr\u003eyouthful and eager, in bliss for that, while I \u003cbr\u003echanged into a shadow just as the oil, \u003cbr\u003eheating in the kitchen, began to snarl \u003cbr\u003eand a single mosquito \u003cbr\u003eitched against the screen, wanting\u003cbr\u003e out, or blood. The arc of distance is partial. \u003cbr\u003eThe sun set into its given, not prone to regret or sorrow. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI’ll stay in the thick jungle’s weeds, without \u003cbr\u003eexpertise, and mystify the brand. A quotidian \u003cbr\u003elogic animates the scene, heads \u003cbr\u003enodding, hands \u003cbr\u003ebusy under cover of night. I’ll stay \u003cbr\u003ehere by the leaves yellowing in their \u003cbr\u003edotage, among sentences \u003cbr\u003edangling on webs and irreducible \u003cbr\u003eto the temptation to flee. I’ll \u003cbr\u003ebe here in the ancient shade of a crass \u003cbr\u003ebelligerent god, huge on a high wire, \u003cbr\u003eteetering over an abyss. I’m here, sweetheart, \u003cbr\u003edressed in my skin, ready\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere is some kindness in the zone of farewell: handing \u003cbr\u003eover the towel, removing the shoes, looking away \u003cbr\u003efrom the hanging figure’s heavy pain, \u003cbr\u003esending a note: \u003ci\u003eBeloved, I regret \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eyou were not able to continue on this path\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e we made together, but did not follow, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eand that your mouth fit so easily over its lies \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003elike a kiss. No matter. We are \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003esevered from the memorial’s agenda, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ewhich has, as you know, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003emoved on without us.\u003c\/i\u003e The light is blue-​­gray \u003cbr\u003eand the evidence of harm has been removed, \u003cbr\u003eswept under the great litter they call \u003ci\u003ewhat happened\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304804896997,"sku":"NP9780143133520","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780143133520.jpg?v=1767737062","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/spell-isbn-9780143133520","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}