University of Iowa Press, 2005 Paper: 978-0-87745-927-9 | eISBN: 978-1-58729-601-7 Library of Congress Classification PS3573.H43465L43 2005 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The many meanings of “economy” are the ground for the mediation and lament of Ledger, Susan Wheeler’s fourth book. In its Greek origins, economy referred to the stewardship of a household and, as it developed, the word also came to include aspects of government and of religious faith. Ledger places an individual’s crisis of spirituality and personal stewardship, or management of her resources, against a backdrop of a culture that has focused its “economy” on financial gain and has misspent its own tangible and intangible resources.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Susan Wheeler is the author of the poetry collections Bag ‘o’ Diamonds, which received the Norma Farber First Book Award of the Poetry Society of America and was short-listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Award; Smokes, which won the Four Way Books Award in 1998; and Source Codes. A novel, Record Palace, will be published by Graywolf Press in May 2005. Her work has appeared in seven editions of the Scribner anthology Best American Poetry as well as in the Paris Review, London Review of Books, Verse, Talisman, the New Yorker, and many other journals. On the creative writing faculties at Princeton University and the New School's graduate program, she lives in Rocky Hill, New Jersey.
REVIEWS
"Susan Wheeler's narrative glamour finds occasions in unlikely places: hardware stores, Herodotus, Hollywood Squares, Flemish paintings, green stamps, and echoes of archaic and cyber speech. What at first seems cacophonous comes in the end to seem invested with a mournful dignity: that of 'the jangling discourse of our nation.' Ledger is a treasure map for those willing to understand the journey."--John Ashbery
"Part narrative, part satire, part cri de coeur, Susan Wheeler's densely wrought new poems are alternately hilarious and chilling in their power to evoke the terrible contradictions of daily life in our media-driven landscape. Wheeler is that rare thing among poets, a genuine cultural critic; her poems use image and allusion with such exactitude that we see the things around us--from pop tarts to polyvinyl toilet seats--as if for the first time. Ledger is a dazzling collection."--Marjorie Perloff, author of The Vienna Paradox
"Susan Wheeler is an exuberant, subtle, endlessly inventive original, and Ledger marks a wonderful advance in her already vital contribution to American poetry. Best of all in Ledger's varied pleasures is 'The Debtor in the Convex Mirror,' an intricate splendor and triumphant fusion of technique and vision."--Harold Bloom, author of Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Loss Lieder
Proper Return
That Been to Me My Lives Light and Saviour
Roanoke and Wampumpeag
The Green Stamp Book
Carnival
Doubled Indemnity
Each's Cot an Alter Then
Short Shrift
Surfeit
Hand, Mouth, Market
Good Goods
Charity Must Abide Call for Ancient Occupation
Anthem
Romanticism
Money and God
Depleted Stocks
Figures on a Kylix ...
Trade
Barry Lyndon in Spring Lake, 1985
Song of the Deserving
Port in the Airport
Toward Autumn
Overtaxed Lament
The Debtor in the Convex Mirror
Acknowledgments
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
University of Iowa Press, 2005 Paper: 978-0-87745-927-9 eISBN: 978-1-58729-601-7
The many meanings of “economy” are the ground for the mediation and lament of Ledger, Susan Wheeler’s fourth book. In its Greek origins, economy referred to the stewardship of a household and, as it developed, the word also came to include aspects of government and of religious faith. Ledger places an individual’s crisis of spirituality and personal stewardship, or management of her resources, against a backdrop of a culture that has focused its “economy” on financial gain and has misspent its own tangible and intangible resources.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Susan Wheeler is the author of the poetry collections Bag ‘o’ Diamonds, which received the Norma Farber First Book Award of the Poetry Society of America and was short-listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Award; Smokes, which won the Four Way Books Award in 1998; and Source Codes. A novel, Record Palace, will be published by Graywolf Press in May 2005. Her work has appeared in seven editions of the Scribner anthology Best American Poetry as well as in the Paris Review, London Review of Books, Verse, Talisman, the New Yorker, and many other journals. On the creative writing faculties at Princeton University and the New School's graduate program, she lives in Rocky Hill, New Jersey.
REVIEWS
"Susan Wheeler's narrative glamour finds occasions in unlikely places: hardware stores, Herodotus, Hollywood Squares, Flemish paintings, green stamps, and echoes of archaic and cyber speech. What at first seems cacophonous comes in the end to seem invested with a mournful dignity: that of 'the jangling discourse of our nation.' Ledger is a treasure map for those willing to understand the journey."--John Ashbery
"Part narrative, part satire, part cri de coeur, Susan Wheeler's densely wrought new poems are alternately hilarious and chilling in their power to evoke the terrible contradictions of daily life in our media-driven landscape. Wheeler is that rare thing among poets, a genuine cultural critic; her poems use image and allusion with such exactitude that we see the things around us--from pop tarts to polyvinyl toilet seats--as if for the first time. Ledger is a dazzling collection."--Marjorie Perloff, author of The Vienna Paradox
"Susan Wheeler is an exuberant, subtle, endlessly inventive original, and Ledger marks a wonderful advance in her already vital contribution to American poetry. Best of all in Ledger's varied pleasures is 'The Debtor in the Convex Mirror,' an intricate splendor and triumphant fusion of technique and vision."--Harold Bloom, author of Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Loss Lieder
Proper Return
That Been to Me My Lives Light and Saviour
Roanoke and Wampumpeag
The Green Stamp Book
Carnival
Doubled Indemnity
Each's Cot an Alter Then
Short Shrift
Surfeit
Hand, Mouth, Market
Good Goods
Charity Must Abide Call for Ancient Occupation
Anthem
Romanticism
Money and God
Depleted Stocks
Figures on a Kylix ...
Trade
Barry Lyndon in Spring Lake, 1985
Song of the Deserving
Port in the Airport
Toward Autumn
Overtaxed Lament
The Debtor in the Convex Mirror
Acknowledgments
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE