{"product_id":"black-series-isbn-9780375709654","title":"Black Series","description":"In her remarkable \u003ci\u003eBlack Series\u003c\/i\u003e, Laurie Sheck turns the ordinary world inside out and shows us its glittering seams. Her long, elegantly quizzical lines convey a haunted vision of human striving which is in part an elaboration on our daily reality, and in part a fantastic departure from it. “I can almost taste the glassy air,” she writes. “Where are the birds in it, \/ wings lifting as currents buffet them like echoes, bright \/ chaos of atomized instances . . . ?” Roaming freely in the shifting landscape of the imagination, Sheck delivers an inner life that is just as vivid as what we see around us; at the same time, she shows us what we see in a new light, bringing illumination even to darkness:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt’s the black night that wakes in me, \u003cbr\u003eso dominant, so focused.\u003cbr\u003eAnd then a car goes by and I think, \u003cbr\u003e“I’m in the world,”\u003cbr\u003etires kicking up gravel from the dust.\u003cbr\u003eWhat does the orange hawkweed do \u003cbr\u003einside this dark–its radiance\u003cbr\u003esecretive but not extinguished?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo read this collection is to discover at every turn that secretive but undeniable radiance, and a language that is both riveting and distinctive.\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\"Rarely, if ever, has the contemporary lyric been both so pure and so informed with varieties of experience; the historical and the mythic and the utterly everyday; crack addicts and Medusa and Goya, carpenter bees and graffiti, the blur of a xerox and the evocativeness of cave paintings; all conveyed with a startling precision of perception and reflection and locution. This is fine work, both delicate and bold.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e--C.K. Williams\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An illuminated insight and wit highlight the deep-seeing of Laurie Sheck's \u003ci\u003eBlack Series.\u003c\/i\u003e This is a seeing into things that is musical, a taking apart and putting-back-together that cast the human eye as godlike--almost Emersonian. What we think we know is imagistically probed till it reveals something we didn't know. In this sense, the poems in Sheck's wonderful book are \"spies of light\": they disrobe our senses so that each of us is Goya's apprentice, honing our skills to see in the dark. Here nothing is borrowed; each poem's imagery is direct, seldom beyond us, yet always challenging. We can all savor \u003ci\u003eBlack Series,\u003c\/i\u003e an exhibition of lyrical surprises.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e-Yusef Komunyakaa\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Laurie Sheck is a modern shaman, a storyteller who knows that the best stories are not those that merely entertain but those that accompany us long after their telling . . . Just as in ancient worlds myths offered the templates for negotiating a safe path through terrors natural and Olympian, Laurie Sheck's poems find embodiments for the maladies of the new millennium: anxiety and the terror of affluence, alienation in the midst of commerce, and the illusion of Free Will in the Free World. Imagine being plopped down in this civilization without prior knowledge of it; imagine having to map your way without any clues but those the mysterious person guarding the city gates chooses to give out. 'Listen carefully,' she whispers; and you do, because your life depends on it.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e--Rita Dove, \u003ci\u003eWashington Post Bookworld\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eLaurie Sheck is the author of three previous books of poetry, the most recent of which, \u003ci\u003eThe Willow Grove\u003c\/i\u003e, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work appears widely in such journals and magazines as \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Kenyon Review\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eBoston Review\u003c\/i\u003e. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, among other institutions, Sheck has been a member of the creative writing faculty at Princeton University and currently teaches in the M.F.A. program at the New School. She lives in New York City.\"The Subway Platform\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd then the gray concrete of the subway platform, that shore\u003cbr\u003e     stripped of all premise of softness\u003cbr\u003eor repose. I stood there, beneath the city’s sequential grids\u003cbr\u003e    and frameworks, its wrappings and unwrappings\u003cbr\u003elike a robe sewn with birds that flew into seasons of light,\u003cbr\u003e    a robe of gold\u003cbr\u003eand then a robe of ash.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll around me were briefcases, cell phones, baseball caps,\u003cbr\u003e     folded umbrellas forlorn and still glistening\u003cbr\u003ewith rain. Who owned them? Each face possessed a hiddenness.\u003cbr\u003e     DO NOT STEP ACROSS THE YELLOW LINE; the Transit Authority\u003cbr\u003ehad painted this onto the platform’s edge\u003cbr\u003e     beyond which the rails\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003egleamed, treacherous, almost maniacal,\u003cbr\u003e     yet somehow full of promise. Glittery, icy, undead.\u003cbr\u003eSharp as acid eating through a mask. I counted forward\u003cbr\u003e     in my mind to the third rail, bristling with current,\u003cbr\u003ehissing inside it like a promise or a wish; and the word\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e     \u003c\/i\u003e“forward” as if inside it also,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eas if there were always a forward, always somewhere else\u003cbr\u003e     to go: station stops, exits, stairways opening out into the dusty\u003cbr\u003elight; turnstiles and signs indicating this street\u003cbr\u003e     or that. Appointments. Addresses. Numbers and letters\u003cbr\u003eof apartments, and their floors. Where was it, that thing I’d felt\u003cbr\u003e     inside me, tensed for flight\u003cbr\u003eor capture, streaked with the notion of distance and desire?\u003cbr\u003e     And the people all around me, how many hadn’t\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eat some time or another curled up in their beds with the shades drawn,\u003cbr\u003e     not knowing how to feel the forwardness, or any trace\u003cbr\u003eof joy? Wing of sorrow, wing of grief,\u003cbr\u003e     I could feel it brushing my cheek, gray bird\u003cbr\u003eI lived with, always it was so quiet on its tether.\u003cbr\u003e     Then the train was finally coming, its earthquaky \u003cbr\u003erumblings building through the tunnel, its focused light\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003elike a small fury. Soon we would get on, would step into\u003cbr\u003e     that body whose headlights obliterate the tunnel’s dark\u003cbr\u003elike chalk scrawling words onto a blackboard.\u003cbr\u003e     I looked down at the hems of the many dresses all around me,\u003cbr\u003ethey were so bright! Why hadn’t I noticed them before? Reds\u003cbr\u003e     and oranges and blues, geometrical and floral patterns\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eswirling beneath the browns and grays of raincoats,\u003cbr\u003e     so numerous, so soft: “threshold,” I thought, and “lullaby,” disclosure,”\u003cbr\u003ethe train growing louder, the feet moving toward the yellow\u003cbr\u003e     line, the hems billowing as the train pulled up,\u003cbr\u003ehow they swayed and furrowed and leapt\u003cbr\u003e     as if a seamstress had loosed them like laughter from her hands–\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Circuits\"\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAgain the dark begins to meddle with the buildings,\u003cbr\u003efirst softening then releasing them\u003cbr\u003ethat they might fold themselves back into concealment,\u003cbr\u003ewhile the silences wander, inexhaustible, diverse,\u003cbr\u003ehovering like shame and not like shame,\u003cbr\u003edispersing over neon-shattered streets.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the programmed air is purposeful and sure; it doesn't wander.\u003cbr\u003eIt carries a deliberateness inside it,\u003cbr\u003ea brittleness like wooden boxes.\u003cbr\u003eIn my neighbor's room, electronic voices soothe him,\u003cbr\u003eand bodies made of an uncertain light\u003cbr\u003ethat pass back and forth through brief episodic disclosures.\u003cbr\u003eNo microbes live in them, or stenches--only a blue glow.\u003cbr\u003eEach night they become their own erasures.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe circuits that guide me are smaller than I know.\u003cbr\u003eWhat gaunt liberty this is, this waiting for headlines,\u003cbr\u003ethe flesh drenched in hearsay,\u003cbr\u003eor the distant, lovely algebra of stars,\u003cbr\u003ethe offer that is good for one week only.\u003cbr\u003eOutside, the raw data of the faces pass.\u003cbr\u003eSomeone is tearing a photograph in thirds. Someone\u003cbr\u003eis laughing. Someone is stockpiling rage,\u003cbr\u003esharp words about to burst into the throat.\u003cbr\u003eWhere is the soundtrack? Where the poison dress to sting me clean?\u003cbr\u003eHow quiet chaos is. How tracelessly it enters.","brand":"Knopf","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305290387685,"sku":"NP9780375709654","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375709654.jpg?v=1767722719","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/black-series-isbn-9780375709654","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}