Human Nature
Published on 1. December 1994
277 pages
978-0-8147-0549-0 (ISBN)
Description
Human Nature explores, both seductively and horrificly, the redemptive possibilities found in an American girlhood gone wrong. Every one of Anderson's poems tells a story?dangerous, sensuous, sometimes crazy, sometimes sacred tales that take us into the heartbreaking reality and strangeness of a little girl who grew up the woman of the house; at once drink-maker, showpiece, secret-keeper, and object of lust.
The terrain of incest and violence sets itself out on the page so subtely and plainly that the poems become mere containers for these extremes, a kind of prayer. Where formal grace might seem impossible, Anderson sings. And this is why the book ?with all its darkness and danger?is, in the end, an affirmative one. The poems rise out of childhood's sorrows into a womanhood filled with the past, hell-bent on the future, and ready for a fight. In haunting, elegant verse, Anderson enters into the truth of experience. Through it all, the poems come to embrace those universal illuminations that arise out of--or even because of--suffering.
The terrain of incest and violence sets itself out on the page so subtely and plainly that the poems become mere containers for these extremes, a kind of prayer. Where formal grace might seem impossible, Anderson sings. And this is why the book ?with all its darkness and danger?is, in the end, an affirmative one. The poems rise out of childhood's sorrows into a womanhood filled with the past, hell-bent on the future, and ready for a fight. In haunting, elegant verse, Anderson enters into the truth of experience. Through it all, the poems come to embrace those universal illuminations that arise out of--or even because of--suffering.
Reviews / Votes
"Beware all those who enter here. Anderson's remarkable first book...is like an outcropping of hell--the reader is compelled by fascination and horror to keep reading...Anderson's life force is implicit in the language throughout these poems, objective, exact, charged with an emotional force given only to those who have been to hell and returned to tell the tale." (Publishers Weekly)More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
File size
55,11 MB
ISBN-13
978-0-8147-0549-0 (9780814705490)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Alice Anderson was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1966. She holds a BA in English from California State University, Sacramento, and an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She has lived in Paris, Geneva, Milan, and Osaka, and is currently residing in Northern California.
Content
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- CONTENTS
- I.
- THE SPLIT
- THE GOOD CHRISTIAN
- LICKING WOUNDS
- THE MARK
- WHAT THE NIGHT IS LIKE
- II.
- ANSWERS
- THE SUICIDE YEAR
- GIRL CADAVER
- THE TEST
- LOOKING FOR NICOLE
- III.
- SIBLING RIVALRY
- LITTLE GIRL CADAVER
- PLAYING DEAD
- DEFENSE
- BLUE - BLACKOUT
- IV.
- NEW JAPAN
- COMMUNION
- GRIEF
- TO THE WOLVES
- ESCAPE
- V.
- CEREMONY OF LIGHT
- CONVICTION
- THE FIGHT
- RETURN
- HUMAN NATURE
