ABOUT THIS BOOK

“I have long believed that Lynn Emanuel is one of the most innovative and subversive poets now writing in America. Her aesthetic and artistic choices consistently invoke a complex hybrid poetics that radically reimagines the shape of our poetic discourse. The brilliant, shattering, and disturbing poems of Noose and Hook are not only wry critiques of recent poetic and cultural activity in this country but also compelling signposts to what yet might be possible in our future. This is Lynn Emanuel's most exquisite and powerful book yet.”—David St. John

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Lynn Emanuel is the author of three previous poetry collections: Hotel Fiesta; The Dig; and Then, Suddenly—. Her work has been included in the Pushcart Prize anthology, Best American Poetry, and The Oxford Book of American Poetry. Emanuel is the recipient of numerous awards including the Eric Matthieu King Award from The Academy of American Poets, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and a National Poetry Series Award. She is professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.

REVIEWS

The tremendous power of Emanuel’s experiment has to do with her immersion in such dialectical twists as presented by the slipperiness of her artisitic medium itself: speech. The whole structure of the book enacts a drama of escape and entrapment as the the lyric “I” disappears and resurfaces. . . . Emanuel offers not only a powerfully and passionately written collection but also a vital contribution to the development of contemporary poetry.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books

“With its exotic quirkiness, ceaseless self-interrogation, and ‘insatiable identities’ that shape-shift from one page to the next, Noose and Hook digs a trench and empties its clip at our hallowed notions of voice and linearity, and serves as a testament to the depth of Emanuel’s vibrant, indeed subversive, imagination. . . .It is difficult to think of another contemporary American poet, apart from Mary Ruefle, with such an unwavering commitment to her own singular vision and inventiveness.”
—Poets Quarterly

“Looping with zany energy and troubling all the way through. This is difficult work, more buffeting that consoling, but remember as you read that Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert said the purpose of art is to say, ‘Wake up!’”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

My Life

Part One

"Martinis, filets and cigarettes, tea sandwiches"

"The living teetered at the edge of a cliff."

The Revolution

"Into the clearing of . . ."

"Personal experiences are chains and balls"

The Occupation

Homage to George Herriman

Metamorphosis

Part Two - The Mongrelogues: Two Acts

Dramatis Personae

Act One

Act Two

Part Three

Dream In Which I Meet Myself

"Dear Diary, here in New York City,"

"Hello, Mallarmé,"

"I tried to flatter myself into extinction; tried to bury alive in a landslide"

"While my mother lies in a hospital bed tethered to the earth"

"These days, Ou sont les neiges d’antan? I often wonder. And What are people"

"Like that time in Paris"

"I told my student Kimber Lester if you cannot actually write"

"April 18, the 21st Century"

Dedication

"Dear Final Journey,"

Notes

Acknowledgments

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