Description
Book SynopsisExperience in Groups sings and thinks the forms of belonging that organize our lives, offering poems that move with honesty and formal intelligence between the individual and the collective. In a time of ascendant fascism and creative political resistance, O'Brien's work demands that an elegy, love poem, and a sonnet sequence become occasions where personal tragedies and joys find a pattern and a place within national and global struggle.
Trade Review"O'Brien touches on the most pressing questions and dilemmas of being human in this time and place with welcome playfulness."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
"A lot of the poems deal with togetherness. They were us . . . To deal with togetherness, though, you have to deal with isolation, which the collection does. Experience in Groups deals with isolation and time, the restlessness knowing that we could spoil everything in an instant."
—Cody Lee, Newpages
Table of ContentsContents
Glass
Poem for Now and Later
Experience in Groups
After England
Chroma
The Middle Distance
Translations from the Occitan
Fidelio
Argus
Sonnets So Far
Valentine Avenue
Nothing, Everything
Elegy
May
Another Poem
Brighton Beach
Experience in Groups
1956–
For Those Still About To
A Downward Motion
We Are Home
Sweet Timothy
My Complaint
Another Elegy
Quick Trip
Experience in Groups
