Theme of Tonight's Party Has Been Changed
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A01=Dana Roeser
addiction recovery in literature
American lyric tradition
art of confession and performance
Author_Dana Roeser
Category=DCF
Catholic imagery in contemporary poetry
celebrity and personal myth in poetry
confessional verse
contemporary American poetry
contemporary women's voices in poetry
dark humor in verse
duende and emotional depth in writing
emotional honesty in modern verse
emotional vulnerability in poetry
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
everyday life as poetic subject
existential comedy
experimental lineation and syntax
family and aging in modern poetry
fragmented self in postmodern poetry
humor as a coping mechanism
humor in poetry
literary depictions of panic and hilarity
literature about loss and survival
mental health and creativity
mortality and midlife reflection
motherhood and anxiety
narrative fragmentation in poetry
parent-child relationships in art
performance and vulnerability in art
poems about illness and mortality
poems about Parkinson's disease
poetic exploration of trauma
poetic voice and performance
poetry about daughters growing up
poetry of grace and disaster
psychological intensity in poetry
psychological realism in literature
religion and irreverence in literature
surreal realism in American poetry
Sylvia Plath's legacy in modern writing
therapy and self-examination in literature
tragicomic poetry
twelve-step culture in art
voice-driven poems
women poets of the twenty-first century
Product details
- ISBN 9781625340979
- Weight: 369g
- Dimensions: 152 x 231mm
- Publication Date: 31 Jan 2014
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Sui generis, Dana Roeser’s poems are spoken by a stand-up comic having a bad night at the local club. The long extended syntax, spread over her quirky, syncopated short lines, contains (barely) the speaker’s anxieties over an ageing father with Parkinson’s, the maturation of two daughters, friends at twelve-step meetings and their sometimes suicidal urges - acted on or resisted - and her own place in a world that seems about to spin out of control. Bad weather and tiny economy cars speeding down the interstate next to Jurassic semis become the metaphor, or figurative vehicle, for this poet’s sense of her own precariousness.
Roeser brings a host of characters into her poems - a Catholic priest raging against the commercialism of Mother’s Day, the injured tennis player James Blake, a man struck by lightning, drunk partygoers, an ex-marine, Sylvia Plath’s son Nicholas Hughes, a neighbour, travellers encountered in airport terminals, various talk therapists - and lets them speak. She records with high fidelity the nuances of our ordinary exigencies so that the poems become extraordinary arias sung by a husky-voiced diva with colouratura phrasing to die for, “the dark notes” that Lorca famously called the duende. The book is infused with the energy of misfortune, accident, coincidence, luck, grace, panic, hilarity. The characters and narrator, in extremis, speak their truths urgently.
Roeser brings a host of characters into her poems - a Catholic priest raging against the commercialism of Mother’s Day, the injured tennis player James Blake, a man struck by lightning, drunk partygoers, an ex-marine, Sylvia Plath’s son Nicholas Hughes, a neighbour, travellers encountered in airport terminals, various talk therapists - and lets them speak. She records with high fidelity the nuances of our ordinary exigencies so that the poems become extraordinary arias sung by a husky-voiced diva with colouratura phrasing to die for, “the dark notes” that Lorca famously called the duende. The book is infused with the energy of misfortune, accident, coincidence, luck, grace, panic, hilarity. The characters and narrator, in extremis, speak their truths urgently.
Dana Roeser is the author of two previous books of poetry, Beautiful Motion and In the Truth Room, both winners of the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize. She has been the recipient of the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Beautiful Motion and an NEA Individual Artist’s Fellowship. She lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, and serves on the core faculty of the MFA in Creative Writing programme at Butler University.
