Immortality

Erscheinungsjahr 2015
ISBN: 978-0-299-30334-1
Verlag: University of Wisconsin Press

Buch, Englisch, 104 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 163 g

Reihe: The Four Lakes Prize in Poetry

“Drop the personal,” Alan Feldman’s best friend advises. But what else does he have? Feldman takes his title from Zhivago’s interpretations of the afterlife: “Your soul, your immortality, your life in others.”

In a collection where the dead do speak, Feldman’s poems in his first segment, “Self-Portraits,” are more likely to be about others than about himself. The segment “Partners” reflects on marriage and divorce, the latter an “uncontested victor over marriage, / the way the flood is champion over the flood plain.” In the section “Offshore” Feldman writes about travel to Uruguay, his impractical love of sailing, and his wonder at Walter Cronkite’s obtuseness about Vietnam. In his final segment, “What Now?,” he asks about meaning itself. Babysitting his tiny granddaughter, he thinks of sailing—hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror—and wonders if even this suggests something world-encompassing he’s “still hoping to find a name for. / If it isn’t joy.”

Autoren/Hrsg.

Feldman, Alan

Über Autor(innen)

Alan Feldman is a professor emeritus of English at Framingham State University, USA and previously taught creative writing at Harvard University, USA. He is the author of many collections of poetry, including A Sail to Great Island, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press, Frank O’Hara, and Lucy Mastermind.