Nightingale

Nightingale

â€œHere, Rekdal translates pain into redemption, so that a loss is not an ending but a transformation, in this riveting poetic alchemy.â€ â€•Publishers Weekly, starred review

â€œNightingale explores what few writers since Ovid have reminded us: metamorphosis is a violent act, requiring dismemberment, silence, and fragmentation before we can become something new.â€ â€•New York Journal of Books

Nightingale is a book about change. This collection radically rewrites and contemporizes many of the myths central to Ovidâ€™s epic, The Metamorphoses, Rekdalâ€™s characters changed not by divine intervention but by both ordinary and extraordinary human events. In Nightingale, a mother undergoes cancer treatments at the same time her daughter transitions into a son; a woman comes to painful terms with her new sexual life after becoming quadriplegic; a photographer wonders whether her art is to blame for her sonâ€™s sudden illness; and a widow falls in love with her dead husbandâ€™s dog. At the same time, however, the book includes more intimate lyrics that explore personal transformation, culminating in a series of connected poems that trace the continuing effects of sexual violence and rape on survivors. Nightingale updates many of Ovidâ€™s subjects while remaining true to the Roman epicâ€™s tropes of violence, dismemberment, silence, and fragmentation. Is change a physical or a spiritual act? Is transformation punishment or reward, reversible or permanent? Does metamorphosis literalize our essential traits, or change us into something utterly new? Nightingale investigates these themes, while considering the roles that pain, violence, art, and voicelessness all play in the changeable selves we present to the world.
Country USA
Brand Copper Canyon Press
Manufacturer Copper Canyon Press
Binding Paperback
ReleaseDate 2019-05-07
UnitCount 1
EANs 9781556595677

Country	USA
Brand	Copper Canyon Press
Manufacturer	Copper Canyon Press
Binding	Paperback
ReleaseDate	2019-05-07
UnitCount	1
EANs	9781556595677

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