Product Description
Winner of the 2001 Iowa Poetry Prize.Karen Volkman’s 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, “Someone was searching for a Form of Fire,” and this wild urge to seek form—and thus definition—in the most uncontainable of elements propels the book forward; each poem maps the mind’s 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’ 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 fiights. 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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Dense Well-Written Modern Prose Poetry.
It is obvious as you enter this book of poems why it was a prize winner.The poet is very talented.She has taken the tradition of the prose poem and jumped into it wholeheartedly.There are a few non-prose poems thrown in with titles which helps to break up the density of the prose poems.

All that being said, this is not a book of poems for the lay reader. I came away feeling that this is artistically sound for those intrested in: post-modernism, surrealism and prose-poetry, but for the general public this may be a difficult book to delve into.

I will be interested to see where this poet takes her style into the future because with lines (from page 7 in my edition) such as the following how can there not be promise!: Meet me two years earlier in the street. Omega Street. I'll try to be there, to be / perfectly present, to get the eyes right.

Absolute doggerel
Google Karen Volkman online and there is this hilarious review written about her, which says what I think far better than I ever could. Volkman is a joke. That people like this teach?!?!

alligator's tears to fearless intropection
I was disappointed, at first, by the prose poem approach: what would happen to the humorous voices rounded by line breaks, alligator purses, tennis courts and humanity's other detritus?This is a poet capable of anything, including sheer beauteous irrelevancy.I wanted her to cling to the personable.But she does sustain a voice, a narrrative harkening back to embodiment, while playing with it.Very impressive.A bit cold?Performance like this can only be judged by the next permutation.I eagerly await it.I do.

Dense & Enticing Book
Karen Volkman is definitely one of the leading poets of her generation.Of this, I have no doubt.In this, her second collection, Volkman uses a denser language and syntax than in her first collection, but the effect is quite stunning.I am not a huge fan of the prose poem, but Volkman knows how to use that form well and demonstrates it in this collection over and over.This is a beautifully-written collection of poetry and is highly recommended by me to anyone interested in what the poets under 40 are writing.//C. Dale Young, Poetry Editor, NEW ENGLAND REVIEW

nuique compelling brilliant modern poetry
Karen Volkman is a very special poet, & for me this book is an absolute masterpiece in terms of aural sophistication & conceptual ingenuity. Volkman writes like no one else, & her writing is rife with great poetic decisions. Her art inspires me with its great vision & boldness. I don't know how unique to me this strong feeling of being able to relate to the thoughts she presents is, but I love it. The book starts with the poem Create Desire, which starts with the line "Someone was searching for a form of fire." Is that what life is? That you are someone searching for a form of fire? Later, she ends one of the prose poems with "Your turn." She ends one with a string of 3 vowels. She builds one by planting in your mind the suspician that she's addressing a lover, then reveals in the last few words that she is indeed. Her tropes & unexpected word choices are so exciting. One of my favorite syntgactical excerpts from the book is in one of the prose poems when she writes,"Plural keeps and cues med, does me dither. Is what is more than mind is -- when I am?" -- though that's not much of an example of her troping. Nothing she does in this book feels accidental or not fully thought through; everything feels like a perfect deliberate decision. She is aware of what prose poems do to the weight of words & the pace of the poem. She's very sparing with titles. She uses more regular lines & stanzas when she decides to. Reading this book is like riding a motorcycle with no brakes!As far as another reviewer's comment that Volkman doesn't give the reader enough information, I think the level of electric metaphor that might be abstruse is a matter of taste.... If you're interested enough in poetry to be considering this book & reading my review, do buy the book; I hope you'll be as pleased as I am. ... Read more

Product Description
Winner of the 1995 National Poetry Series, judged and selected by Heather McHugh. Through myth, dream, and sensual detail, the poems in this remarkable first collection portray a hectic world plagued by a desire for psychic coherence. The book begins and ends in extremity: the opening poem, "Infernal," evokes the searing realm of an actual and metaphoric Miami, while the final poem, "New Heaven, New Earth," alludes to seeking a path through dense woods amid a blinding, obliterating blizzard. In their longing to define a set of terms for spiritual survival, these essentially lyric poems merge an evocation of contemporary consciousness with the oldest conventions of cry and song. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Jump-off-the-page brilliant work
This is the strongest debut--and in fact the most exciting book of poems--that I have read in a long time.The poems are indeed smart (aren't poets supposed to, like, kinda know stuff?), but Volkman has such a respect for the forces of language that they are never only clever.I'd actually given up expecting to find new poems so immediately exciting that also compelled slow, tough reading.

If I had one qualm it's that the ghost of Plath, or her punchy, crackly diction, seems to haunt a couple too many poems.But I am amazed at Volkman's detractors (below).Mostly when I read those kind of comments I can see what they are getting at.In this case, I simply have no idea what they are talking about. Crash's Law is wonderful stuff:expert without being mannered (no "well-made" observations here); sharp without being slick.It's just very heartening that someone is again capable of doing work of this quality so early in her career.

The real thing, again, at last.

new art
Karen Volkman's is a voice one does want to see continue.In this book, she offers her own insights & ideas -- poetically, unuquely, metaphorically -- & embraces lyric poetry while remaining as experimental as she weants to be.Clearly she's smart, individualistic, & I'm interested to see what more poetry she proves capable of, as early books tend to be regarded as primarily only formative after the career has been attended to further.

I think it is an excellent first book
I love the wit and intelligence of Volkman's poetry.

Her work is erudite and crafty, emotionally deep and unwaveringly honest. Her many awards are richly deserved-- she is one poet who I think will have strength and staying power. Since this book's publication, I have run across her work in a variety of poetry journals, including the Paris Review, and have been impressed by her range and intelligence. She is clearly very confident and unafraid of challenging herself.

I greatly look forward to her next book. I think it is coming out soon in fact.

Crash's Law Crashes
Don't believe the hype with this book.Pretentious, deliberately opaque, and just plain boring, this is one of those books that leaves you nonplussed at how the judges of the National Poetry Series justified giving it an award.Yawn. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

little, very little, talent for the form
It's not only hard to think of these as sonnets, it's hard to think of them as poems.Is it possible to imagine a more grade school version of couplets than the following (used in the ad):

grass-grown remembrance of a second look
the field holds open like a nascent book
in which the wind has written, Sudden strays,
sudden numbers beat-the roots of days
branched intangibles a stupor took
and slept and stroked and scattered in a shook

Can this really be taken seriously?

The field holds open like a "nascent book"?

"branched intangibles of a stupor took
and slept and stroked and scattered in a shook?

It may be that that this poet has taken on the burden of a form whose weight she is not quite ready to bear. The sonnet is not a matter of counting on the fingers, though I wish her well as her talents grow.

Nomina
Although Karen Volkman's Nomina has beautiful phrasing, this collection of sonnets puzzles me. There seems a lack of purpose unless it is to string together a series of pretty and often over-alliterative phrases. It is this lack of wholeness that leaves me wondering if she is playing with her audience. Does she mean to replace purpose with motif ("blue egg", "blue beneficence", "blue mirror", "bluest blankness")? Volkman pushes edginess by using adjectives as verbs ("distinct the dolor"), adverbs as nouns ("whether in the where", and verbs as nouns ("we are taught the drowns"). I fail to understand phrasing such as "kind the killing". For those who are not familiar with her work, I recommend reading some of her work on the internet or in other publications before buying this book.

Not Really to My Taste
I made a mistake with this one, and I blame no one but myself.I read a lot of poetry in journals and magazines, and I have made it my policy not to read a collection until I have learned to like a poet through the periodicals.There is simply too much poetry to read to waste time on authors that I am not likely to appreciate.Unfortunately, I did not follow my rule with Ms. Volkman.

Instead, I read about Ms. Volkman's work.(I cannot now remember where.)I read that this collection of hers is sonnets that really push the envelope with the form.As a great fan of the sonnet, I thought I had much to gain by checking this one out, but I didn't come away with much.

Clearly, Ms. Volkman is a very intelligent person with poetic talent; however, she does too many things that rub me the wrong way.She often uses short, choppy phrasing which detracts from the form, in my opinion.She has a powerful vocabulary but too often uses obscure and/or obsolete words which tend to hide meaning.She often pushes the use of alliteration to the breaking point.And, since I'm being picky, I tend to dislike poems without titles.(I don't know why.It's a personal thing.I just don't like it.)

That's not to say that there aren't some great turns of phrase here: "teardrops scoring their lesions/ in every substance that grieves", "Night is what she saw,/ in opaque increments deafening the tongue".My favorite poem is probably "A premise, a solace" which seems to have a wholeness that some of the other poems lack in addition to its beautiful, descriptive language.

Still, in the end, I felt that reading her poetry was too much work for too little rewards.I like to work for my poetic insights, but even I run out of patience sometimes.

The sonnet, through history, comes together again!
Karen Volkman's third book of poetry affirms that she continues to be one of the most pressing & talented poets we have.This book is a searing song-- no syllable ever misses a millimeter.Here should leave a mark.Volkman's highly musical words are like Milton dipped Petrarch's mood in a patient etherized upon a table with a rinse of Dante's terza rima.Sexy.The flow of sonnets is uninterrupted ever.The unbroken, pellucid sonnet sequence assembled here is a read for the ear. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Karen Volkman, Julia Galloway, Rudy Autio. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 17. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Karen Volkman (born 1967 Miami, Florida) is an American poet. She was educated at New College, Syracuse University, and the University of Houston. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The Best American Poetry, and The Pushcart Prize XXVII. She has taught at several universities, including the University of Alabama, University of Pittsburgh, University of Chicago, and Columbia College Chicago. She currently lives in Missoula, and teaches in the MFA writing program at the University of Montana-Missoula. The recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Akademie Schloss Solitude. Karen Volkman is one of the most talented poets in America today. Her poems are rife with startle and surprise, but the unexpected images and phrases always feel aptthey are never attempts at novelty for novelty's sake, but rather the elements of what Auden called a secondary world. The poems are strange, distant and intimate in the manner of dreams, and also like dreams in their clarity and focus: we may not know what the events and objects "mean," but we feel their reality no less intensely. American poetry is crazy about the prose poem. Even more than your drippings of Billy Collins or beefsteaks of Albert Goldbarth, the prose poem, big or little, is showing its twisted ass all over the dance floor. As if doing the literary equivalent of that spazz-dance of Elaine's from Seinfeld were a good thing, the prose poem insists upon its significance by becoming the it form in contemporary poetry. If only its convolutions ... Read more

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This digital document, covering the life and work of Karen Volkman, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 935 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
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• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

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Chapters: David Wojahn, Forrest Mcdonald, Carl Carmer, David T. Beito, S. A. M. Wood, Karen Volkman, Harry G. Shaffer, Philip Guthrie Hoffman, Dinsmore Alter, Andrew Imbrie, William Ward Pigman, George Doherty Johnston, Hank Lazer, Robert Erwin Johnson, Joel Brouwer, James Otteson, Peter Streckfus, Cornelius Carter, Bruce Smith, Richard Lomax, John Engels, Frederick I. Ordway Iii, Steven C. Hebert, Solon Toothaker Kimball, Hudson Strode, John Mallet, Robert Kennon Hargrove, William Bacon Oliver, Philip Daileader, Michael Calvin Mcgee, Harold See, Ibrahim Fawal, George C. Rable, C. Mel Wilcox. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 104. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: David Wojahn (b. 1953 St. Paul, Minnesota) is a contemporary American poet who teaches poetry in the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, and in the low residency MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He also directs Virginia Commonwealth University's Creative Writing Program. He was educated at the University of Minnesota, and the University of Arizona. Wojahn taught for many years at Indiana University. He has also taught at University of Alabama, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, University of Chicago, University of Houston, and University of New Orleans. In 2003, he joined Virginia Commonwealth University, Most of Wojahn's poetry is metrical although he also works in free verse, usually addressing political and social issues in American life. He often takes as his subjects moments of historical significance, such as the assassination of John Lennon or the professional decline of Jim Morrison. He has said that he hopes his poetry is considered "activist." The noted poet Richard Hugo selected Wojahn's first book, Icehouse Lights, as a winner of the prestigious Yale Series ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=8659442 ... Read more

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Additional contributors are: Rishi Zutshi, Jaime Saenz, Jack Spicer, Erin Moure, Stephen Ratcliffe, Juliana Leslie, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Aaron Kunin, Barbara Guest, Marjorie Perloff, and Ben Lerner. ... Read more

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Brochure for the LRWG course.
"We begin by pairing you with a professional writer or editor who develops a teaching plan for you that meets your needs and objectives. As your personal mentor, he or she works with you from your first assignment until the day you finish the program. The result is that we help you to achieve your personal writing goals more fully than any other writing program." ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from The Antioch Review, published by Antioch Review, Inc. on January 1, 2003. The length of the article is 494 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Spar.(Book Review)
Author: Jane Satterfield
Publication: The Antioch Review (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2003
Publisher: Antioch Review, Inc.
Volume: 61Issue: 1Page: 181(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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