{"product_id":"9781602351530","title":"Rumor","description":"\u003cp\u003eRobinson’s ambition in \u003cem\u003eRumor \u003c\/em\u003e is enormous—to understand the problem of violence, to understand how power subjugates bodies and souls and turns them to use. In the world these poems inhabit, language itself is a violent power tool, a buzzsaw, precise, ruthless, and often wrong. Yet language’s instability allows Robinson to turn it on itself to question categories such as gender. Through brooding, bloody, clearwater analysis, through delicate, brutally uncertain self-questioning, Robinson’s poems create a frictive warmth that’s not comfortable, but rousing. —Catherine Wagner\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eElizabeth Robinson has long been probing the interplay of the personal with the abstract or, as she has put it, “the brick floor from which the\/ kingdom of God extends\/ or could extend.” In \u003cem\u003eRumor\u003c\/em\u003e, the poet-victim (whom “grief evicts” from herself) tries to take on the persona of perpetrator as if it were a sanctuary from which to explore and understand the violence: “she lies a divided pronoun \/. . . \/ knife slicing through softened self\/. . . \/ She\/ crouches over\/ herself, a difficult\/ situation.” The poems worry at boundaries between subject\/object, male\/female\/ transgender, but most of all between “abstract” violence and the physical (“the teacher\/ flayed by removal from\/ the student”). This process of incarnation, of word made flesh is frightening, nauseating, but must be faced: “we cough up words made of flesh\/ and eat them anew.” Here “I myself\/ had no face, but took\/ to smiling” and “wrapped my hand around my incomprehension.” \u003cem\u003eRumor\u003c\/em\u003e is fascinating, daunting, complex. Its exploration remains open, does not pretend to find answers, but instead offers memorable words: “How firmly the answer closes its eyes.” —Rosmarie Waldrop\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eELIZABETH ROBINSON is the author of multiple collections of poetry, including the National Poetry Series winner, \u003cem\u003ePure Descent\u003c\/em\u003e, and the Fence Modern Poets Prize winner, \u003cem\u003eApprehend\u003c\/em\u003e. Her poetry has appeared in such anthologies as \u003cem\u003eAmerican Hybrid\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eThe Best American Poetry of 2002\u003c\/em\u003e. She works as the homeless navigator for Boulder Municipal Court and teaches at Lighthouse Writers’ Workshop.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Parlor Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47050973544688,"sku":"9781602351530","price":14.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781602351530_p0.jpg?v=1763826944","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781602351530","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}