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The
Year We Studied Women
Bruce Snider
Winner of the 2003 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, selected
by Kelly Cherry
In this intimate first collection Bruce Snider explores the intricacies
of memory, loss, and identity in poems about everything from
algebra to sperm to lipstick. A farmer finds the body of a dead
child, a boy watches his mother get ready for a date, a woman
with cancer shops for a wig, an overweight sister shares a cupcake
with her little brother. In the book's longest and most complex
poem a tarot card reading excavates the relationship between
a son and his distant, often violent father. Sometimes funny,
always big-hearted and inventive, Snider catalogues the minutiae
of daily life with language that is plainspoken yet strongly
imagistic, weaving together both public and private moments as
he maps one man's longing for transformation. It's an attempt
to reconcile it all—past and present, fear and desire, self
and sexuality—making the barest symbols of maleness and
femaleness into their own deeply personal language.
"During a time when first collections
are apt to be a little too cautious and disappointingly arid,
it's a pleasure to encounter the verve and self-assurance of
Bruce Snider's debut. His voice is always engaging; his imagery
is original, and his poems know how to make the difficult leap
from hilarity to pathos. His is writing that matters."—David
Wojahn
"Bruce Snider's superb poems seem to have come into being
without any need to impress or prove a point or compete. They
are pure in that way, content and courageous enough to be what
they are: observant, expressive, sometimes sad, sometimes slyly
witty, always true to a trajectory that is purposeful and swift
even as it takes surprising turns. Undistracted by what they
have to say, these poems say it fully and convincingly, so that
the poet appears on the page by virtue of never calling attention
to himself. That wonderful, uncommon paradox, that art."—Kelly
Cherry, 2003 Felix Pollak Prize judge and author of Rising
Venus: Poems.
"How can poems be so fierce and so
delicate all at once? Bruce Snider is a master of elegant movements,
turning phrases and layering images to create a supple, velveteen
texture of words. His penetrating gaze never wavers. Mystery
stitches its luminous seam through the lines. These poems are
comforting in their perfection. One plus one equals everything
here."—Naomi Shihab Nye
Bruce Snider
is originally from rural Indiana and has lived for the past several
years in Austin, Texas, where he was a James A. Michener Fellow
and earned his MFA in poetry and playwriting at the University
of Texas Michener Center for Writers. He is currently a Wallace
Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. His poetry has appeared
in the Mid-American Review, Prairie Schooner, Third Coast,
and Hayden's Ferry Review. This is his first book.
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October 2003 LC: 2003006270
pp. 6 x 9
ISBN 0-299-19380-2 Cloth $26.95 s
ISBN 0-299-19384-5 Paper $14.95 t
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