Sandra Simonds's Triptychs is a brilliant intersection of poetic form and the passage of time.
Crafted initially in strips handwritten on rolls of receipt paper obtained at a dollar store, then assembled into three textual columns that sit side-by-side on the page, these triptychs are joined or disjoined in several ways-through diction, through the special relation of words (evoking intimacy, touch or, in contrast, alienation), and through thematic similarities or dissimilarities. Each poem is wildly surprising, ranging from conversations between Baudelaire and Jayne Eyre to the enjoyment of macaroons.
As a result, the poems energize the confines of this writing space as they invite readers to recall painterly constructions and news headlines, wherein each pillar is in conversation with another, sequentially and simultaneously. With the same lyric attention found in all of Simonds's poetry, the poems here mark an innovative shift in poetics that is both polyvocal and singular.
By:
Sandra Simonds
Imprint: Wave Books
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 190mm,
Width: 228mm,
Spine: 12mm
ISBN: 9781950268689
ISBN 10: 1950268683
Pages: 96
Publication Date: 07 February 2023
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
TABLE OF CONTENTS I Gave Birth in Another Era Bildungsroman Reading The Bell Jar in Everglades National Park Gong! Gong! Gong! Now that You’re Dead, I’m Observing Great Bodies of Water With Joy with No Joy Now Wait for Last Year Let’s Make the Water Turn Black And the Days Shall be Filled with Music The Poet Enters Through the Subjunctive Mood Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk I Sang a Song with the Dead March Pandémie Planting a Loquat Tree During the Worst Week of the Pandemic As in the Pyroclastic Volcano The Future is Not What it Was Your Eyes Resemble Mine Poem with Three Lines by Gustaf Sobin Dollar Tree Poiesis Tick Tock Cryptic Hold! Said the Hand Said the Money To Take a Lover in the Intricately Woven Kaleidoscope Dear Anselm, Pastoral in the Minor Key The Only Cloud in the Sky to Impress me with a Demoniacal Grandeur The Password is Hex Key 526 The Flammagenitus Strophes Skate World Waveform It was Raining in the French Concession Double Happiness or “Modernity Means Contingency” Trashland Political Economy An Equanimous Defense of the Exclamation Point New Year’s Requiem Makeup Pollen Ointment I Bought You a Bonsai Cypress Tree on the Way to the Shore On Avondale and Riverside
Sandra Simondsis the author of Atopia(Wesleyan University Press, 2019), Orlando. She lives in Tallahassee, Florida and is anAssociate professor of English and Humanities at Thomas University in Thomasville, Georgia.
Reviews for Triptychs
Fevered and philosophical, Simonds's fierce lyric rages against capitalism and patriarchy for stifling compassion and collective imagination --New Yorker Simonds paints a careful portrait of the struggle to embrace difficult realities in an age in which it would be irresponsible to ignore them, even if doing so offers no easy path forward. --starred review for ATOPIA, Publishers Weekly
