James Laughlin Award winner
Karen Volkman鈥檚 award-winning collection Spar has as its central form a highly compressed, musical variant of the prose poem. Volkman develops a new lyric density that marries the immediacy of image-centered poetry to the rhythmic resources of prose. Her first poem begins, 鈥淪omeone was searching for a Form of Fire,鈥 and this wild urge to seek form鈥攁nd thus definition鈥攊n the most uncontainable of elements propels the book forward; each poem maps the mind鈥檚 evolving positions in response to its variable and perilous encounters. Sometimes the encounter is romantic or purely carnal, a sensual landscape of human relations. At other times, nature itself has an almost humanly emotional connection to the speaker. While very much a living voice, the poems鈥 speaker is not a consistent self but a mutable figure buffeted by tenderness, terror, irony, or lust into elaborate evasions, exclamations, verbal hijinks, and lyric flights. As its title suggests, Spar embodies both resistance and aspiration, while its epigraphs further emphasize the simultaneous allure and danger of the unknown within the sensual and material worlds and in the mind itself.
鈥淜aren Volkman is a young poet who presents her reader new knowledge. She convinces me, saying, 鈥業 believe there is a song that is stranger than wind.鈥 With utter confidence, her poetry teaches something more. From Karen Volkman I have learned there is another thing鈥攑rofound and simple and beautiful鈥攖o say. In this book the reader will find grace, intelligence, and authority. Learn from her: 'Vacancy's ambassador, other鈥攚e are here.鈥欌濃擜llen Grossman, author of How to Do Things with Tears
鈥淰olkman convincingly melds her engagement with the ludic quality of words with the marvelously chaotic commerce of the natural world ...these poems are involved, elusive and often startling performance.鈥濃Publishers Weekly, April 29, 2002
鈥淜aren Volkman excels in a lyrical torque so polished, it borders on obsessive-compulsive ... Her poems are the best of contradictions, coupling tradition with today's sardonic uncertainty.鈥濃擟athy Hong for Voice Literary Supplement Spring 2002
Praise for the author' first book
鈥淰olkman鈥檚 style informs her work with an exciting confidence.鈥濃Publishers Weekly
鈥淰olkman鈥檚 poems sear us with their passion. (They) are quintessentially lyrical鈥攂lood-raw, soul-stinging, torqued by their forcefulness. A riveting, fresh, collection.鈥濃Booklist
Winner of the 2001 澳洲幸运10开奖 Poetry Prize
