Search results for ""Author Kathleen Ossip""

Book Synopsis100 Best Books of 2011, Publishers Weekly 2011 Notable Books, Academy of American Poets From the powerful drama and formal boldness of "The Status Seekers" to the various theories of criticism in "The Nervousness of Yvor Winters," Kathleen Ossip's second collection takes up the crazed threads of modern experience and all its contradictions. Each poem, each new approach is an attempt to extract something concrete from an era not yet past. Yet as the poet probes and wonders, she gradually reveals another narrative, built on strangled emotion and subdued lyricism. The Cold War is jagged and thought-provoking. It questions the origins and premises of contemporary American culture.Trade ReviewOssip’s long-awaited second book is a surprising poetic powerhouse that interweaves the personal and the political in ways that are as aesthetically exciting as they are emotionally rich. The book opens with a jumpy ode on melancholy that takes off, as two of the best of these poems do, from a hefty quote from a weighty book (in this poem’s case Karl Menninger’s The Human Mind) and the words “In those days”: “Melancholia, we cherished,” writes Ossip, and, later, “The intellect’s/ a pissy thing, a fortress.” Here and elsewhere, Ossip deftly mixes linguistic registers in poems that blend aspects of confessional writing, social and literary criticism, and history. The book’s centerpiece is the traumatized, post-9/11 “Document,” a long series of sentences and fragments that attempt to manage an unshakable feeling of danger: “Put space between you and the attack. Oh fruity word!” Or the centerpiece might be the essay/ poetic sequence/ tribute called “The Nervousness of Yvor Winters,” which takes off from Winters’s life and work to finally ask the question, “Do we want to understand poems, or do we want poems that understand us?” The book gains other dimensions from further sequences and prose fables, such as “The Deer Path,” in which “One deer sped by in a small, trucklike vehicle and shouted FUCK! at me through the open window in an unmistakably cruel way.” Ossip is about to take the poetry world off guard with what is surely among the most various, powerful, and representative (of post-terror America) poetry collections of the past few years. (May) —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Ossip’s pieces invite our understanding, while her refusal to make wholes defies it; that defiance, too, belongs to our time.” —Stephen Burt, The Nation Ms. Ossip conjures delightful and unexpected muses in this socio-poetical exploration of post-World War II America, taking as her starting points Karl A. Menninger, who wrote “The Human Mind”; Vance Packard, author of “The Status Seekers”; and that scalawag of orgone energy, Wilhelm Reich. In this shrewd and ambitious work Ms. Ossip participates in a very old-fashioned sport, parsing the American mind through the filter of cold war paranoia. —Dana Jennings, The New York Times “A book of impressive breadth, The Cold War, for all its sprawling forms and unexpected source texts and materials, also communicates the poet’s emotional relationship to her country and her art.” —American Poet Ossip’s book is a rebuke to the idea that politics and the personal can’t be fruitfully combined in poetry. —Anis Shivani, Huffington PostOssip’s long-awaited second book is a surprising poetic powerhouse that interweaves the personal and the political in ways that are as aesthetically exciting as they are emotionally rich. The book opens with a jumpy ode on melancholy that takes off, as two of the best of these poems do, from a hefty quote from a weighty book (in this poem’s case Karl Menninger’s The Human Mind) and the words “In those days”: “Melancholia, we cherished,” writes Ossip, and, later, “The intellect’s/ a pissy thing, a fortress.” Here and elsewhere, Ossip deftly mixes linguistic registers in poems that blend aspects of confessional writing, social and literary criticism, and history. The book’s centerpiece is the traumatized, post-9/11 “Document,” a long series of sentences and fragments that attempt to manage an unshakable feeling of danger: “Put space between you and the attack. Oh fruity word!” Or the centerpiece might be the essay/ poetic sequence/ tribute called “The Nervousness of Yvor Winters,” which takes off from Winters’s life and work to finally ask the question, “Do we want to understand poems, or do we want poems that understand us?” The book gains other dimensions from further sequences and prose fables, such as “The Deer Path,” in which “One deer sped by in a small, trucklike vehicle and shouted FUCK! at me through the open window in an unmistakably cruel way.” Ossip is about to take the poetry world off guard with what is surely among the most various, powerful, and representative (of post-terror America) poetry collections of the past few years. (May) —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Ossip’s pieces invite our understanding, while her refusal to make wholes defies it; that defiance, too, belongs to our time.” —Stephen Burt, The Nation Ms. Ossip conjures delightful and unexpected muses in this socio-poetical exploration of post-World War II America, taking as her starting points Karl A. Menninger, who wrote “The Human Mind”; Vance Packard, author of “The Status Seekers”; and that scalawag of orgone energy, Wilhelm Reich. In this shrewd and ambitious work Ms. Ossip participates in a very old-fashioned sport, parsing the American mind through the filter of cold war paranoia. —Dana Jennings, The New York Times “A book of impressive breadth, The Cold War, for all its sprawling forms and unexpected source texts and materials, also communicates the poet’s emotional relationship to her country and her art.” —American Poet Ossip’s book is a rebuke to the idea that politics and the personal can’t be fruitfully combined in poetry. —Anis Shivani, Huffington PostTable of Contents1 Elegy American History (A Fearsome Solitude) 2 The Status Seekers The Status Seekers: Richard (Bud) and Joy 3 Document: 4 Confession The Nervousness of Yvor Winters Romantic Depot Upon the Porch Poetry is Sardonic. Business is Sincere The Senator and the Medical Intuitive 5 The Deer Path The Cold War

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Book SynopsisA much anticipated third collection with poems mourning a mother figure, as well as recently deceased cultural icons. Praise for Kathleen Ossip: “Ossip conjures delightful and unexpected muses…shrewd and ambitious.” —New York Times Book Review "The Do-Over, Ossip’s third collection, is a lyrical, open-ended, meta-leaning meditation on the subject of death….[A]n exquisite cocktail of displacement, minutiae, and metapoetic introspection." —Boston Review “The biggest surprise in poetry for 2011 is this second book by Kathleen Ossip. It’s got everything one could wish for in a new collection of poems. . . . It’s just beautiful. And terrifying.” —Publishers Weekly, Best Books of 2011 “The poet has an uncanny ability to convey what it actually feels like to be alive today…Ossip is one of our foremost ethnographers of contemporary unreality.” —The Believer “How do you stay in heaven?” Ossip asks, “Is it a kind of sophisticated rewind?” Her third collection of poems is haunted by the idea of ‘rewind,’ and especially by the teasing possibility that we, too–like the moon, like a plant–may be granted cycles of life, death, and rebirth. The book's overarching narrative is the death of the poet’s stepmother-in-law, a cherished, loving, eccentric woman who returns to its pages again and again. But in spite of its focused grief and ontological urgency, The Do-Over is a varied collection–short acrostics mourn recently dead cultural icons (Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs, Donna Summer); there's an ode to an anonymous Chinese factory worker, three “true stories” that read like anecdotes told over drinks, and more. The Do-Over is an unsentimental elegy to a mother figure, a fragmented portrait of its difficult, much loved subject. It's also a snapshot of our death-obsessed, death-denying cultural moment, which in Ossip's gifted hands turns out to be tremulous, skeptical, unsure of ultimate values and, increasingly, driven to find them. “I am still studying, aren’t you?” she begins. Readers will eagerly embrace the surprise, humor, and seriousness of her quest.Trade Review"Working in acrostics, chain verse, prose, couplets, quatrains, Ossip's a magpie who pilfers from magpies....[S]he has an eye for 'the light of the culture: gold and misleading' and an ear that saves her wisdom moments from bluntness: 'I see the forest, I see the trees. / What I can't see is the / dappled clearing I'm standing on.' And then she devastates you by removing a single letter from a common poetic word: 'In the clearing, the now is falling.'" —The Chicago Tribune "It may be the case that Ossip understands the elasticity and capaciousness of contemporary poetry better than anybody. . . . This is our book." —NPR "In as much as it makes sense to talk about writing as perfect, The Do-Over is not, nor does it mean to be. But it is remarkable: unusually alive, intelligent and alert; unusually imaginative in its ways of letting the now fall into poems that find more invitations in impermanence than any others I’ve read recently." —Slate "This supremely protean, dexterous poet focuses her reader’s attention on the hinges between the physical and metaphysical, on the reinvention of narrative and metaphor.... Ossip suggests that we let grief enliven us, shake up our language, darken our metaphors, and tear us awake." —Harvard Review “Unassuming and masterfully crafted, Ossip’s poetry is sneaky, very often disguising itself as easy and surprising you the moment you let your guard down. . . . The Do-Over is a kind of elegy to contemporary culture: it critiques modern life while basking in its ever-younger, glitzier rabble." —The Paris Review "Each of Ossip’s acrostics shows her to be a master of compression, whereas the longer, serial prose-verse poems demonstrate her ability to build longer structures without sacrificing density of language.” —The Brooklyn Rail"Working in acrostics, chain verse, prose, couplets, quatrains, Ossip's a magpie who pilfers from magpies....[S]he has an eye for 'the light of the culture: gold and misleading' and an ear that saves her wisdom moments from bluntness: 'I see the forest, I see the trees. / What I can't see is the / dappled clearing I'm standing on.' And then she devastates you by removing a single letter from a common poetic word: 'In the clearing, the now is falling.'" —The Chicago Tribune "It may be the case that Ossip understands the elasticity and capaciousness of contemporary poetry better than anybody. . . . This is our book." —NPR "In as much as it makes sense to talk about writing as perfect, The Do-Over is not, nor does it mean to be. But it is remarkable: unusually alive, intelligent and alert; unusually imaginative in its ways of letting the now fall into poems that find more invitations in impermanence than any others I’ve read recently." —Slate "This supremely protean, dexterous poet focuses her reader’s attention on the hinges between the physical and metaphysical, on the reinvention of narrative and metaphor.... Ossip suggests that we let grief enliven us, shake up our language, darken our metaphors, and tear us awake." —Harvard Review “Unassuming and masterfully crafted, Ossip’s poetry is sneaky, very often disguising itself as easy and surprising you the moment you let your guard down. . . . The Do-Over is a kind of elegy to contemporary culture: it critiques modern life while basking in its ever-younger, glitzier rabble." —The Paris Review "Each of Ossip’s acrostics shows her to be a master of compression, whereas the longer, serial prose-verse poems demonstrate her ability to build longer structures without sacrificing density of language.” —The Brooklyn RailTable of Contents1 A. in May / 8 Mothers Day / 9 “I’m afraid of death” / 10 Ode / 11 The Road Trip and the Apron String / 15 Lyric / 16 2 Ghost Moon / 28 How can we know the journey from the path? / 29 On Political Crisis / 31 The Great Man is dead, / 32 It’s hard to keep identities / 33 Veterans Day / 34 Amy Winehouse / 35 Steve Jobs / 36 Troy Davis / 37 Lucian Freud, / 38 Donna Summer / 39 Three True Stories / 40 The Millipede / 41 3 A. in January / 44 What is A. / 45 What is Death / 46 Sonnet for A. / 53 Libraries & Museums / 54 4 “No use” / 56 Three Short Lyrics / 58 After / 59 5 On Sadness / 73 The Do-Over / 74 Tool Moan / 75 Words for a Newborn / 76 The Arrival of Spring / 78 Funeral of My Character / 81 One Short Lyric / 82 Oh, wow, mausoleums, / 83

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Book SynopsisIn her groundbreaking and most politicized collection, Kathleen Ossip takes a hard look at the U.S.A. as it now stands. She meditates on our various responses to our country—whether ironic, infantile, righteous, or defeated. Her diction is both high and low, her tone both elegant and straightforward. The book’s crowning achievement, its anchor, and its centerpiece is the poem “July.” In a generous fifty pages, Ossip recounts a road trip from Bemidji, MN, to Key West, FL, with her daughter riding shotgun. Inspired by images that flick across their car windows and nurtured by intimate conversation and plenty of time to think, the poem has an entertaining cinematic sweep. There are poems based on bumper stickers, the names of churches, little shops. Traveling tests her beliefs, and Ossip fully discloses her doubts and confusions. Ossip is an unconventional, mighty magician with words.Trade ReviewNPR, “Best Books of 2021: Books We Love” Poets & Writers, "Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin" NPR, "While the Possible is Possible: A 2021 Poetry Preview" Library Journal, "Books and Authors To Know: Poetry Titles to Watch 2021" by Barbara Hoffert Ms. Magazine, "2021 Poetry for the Rest of Us" CLMP, “A Reading List for Women’s History Month” The Casual Optimist, “Notable Book Covers of 2021” The Casual Optimist, "Book Covers of Note, June 2021" "Ossip examines the United States in these meditative poems, the longest of which is a travelogue across the country. Her verse is rich with images of America, capturing its beliefs and defeats." —“Weathering the Times,” Publishers Weekly "This is one of the most encompassing and exciting books of poetry I've read in a long time." —"While the Possible is Possible: A 2021 Poetry Preview," NPR "Figurative language, especially alliteration, repetition, and metaphor, races through these pages like the balls in a pinball machine, gathering energy and grace." —Library Journal, online and print "The rich fourth collection from Ossip finds wonder in quotidian experiences and objects....[I]mpressive in its thinking and its formal dexterity." —Publishers Weekly "Critically acclaimed poet Kathleen Ossip's July offers a revelatory and lived-in reflection on tumultuous times. . . . With her athletic lyricism, turbulent layouts and wide-ranging subject matter, Ossip challenges readers to hold multiple conflicting and unimaginable truths in their heads at once. Doing so, she suggests, may not solve the moral or political dilemmas of contemporary life, but it is a start." —Shelf Awareness starred review "Ossip’s 'July' represents a candid and fearless portrait of the author’s voyage into the very heart of her nation." —"July Review: Ossip Deftly Analyses Womanhood in Modern America," Harvard Crimson "The way this book moves through time is so wonderful to me. It’s descriptive and it lingers for sweet moments before suddenly jumping to a new memory. It gave me the sensation of driving down a long open road with my hand floating out the window, breaking the wind for a moment before letting it take me." —"Poet in the Mirror: Kathleen Ossip," Frontier Poetry "Movement, attention, intimacy." —"2021 Poetry for the Rest of Us," Ms. Magazine “What’s a poet to do in a time when the great weapon used to suppress critical thought is a raw overwhelm of meaningless language? Kathleen Ossip demonstrates one approach in her brilliant July, which feels at once totally intimate, familiar, and also miraculous, unprecedented. Ossip writes, ‘Smoothly the current does / not run; smoothness can never shock,’ and then she shocks us, staggers and stranges and de-euphemizes the language to allow her readers to finally, at last, really hear it again. What’s a poet to say to her nation as it crumbles apart? ‘We need faith while the possible is possible. / After, we need hope.’” —Kaveh Akbar, author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf “Some poetry collections, not overtly, teach you things. In the case of Kathleen Ossip’s JULY, the thing is the true difference between reaction and reflection. This collection is a wondrous (in its multimodal alacrity and unruliness) and wonderful (in its Goddess-eye panning of the United States and its self-critical threading of one woman’s mind and body) reconsideration of pasts recent and distant, personal and national. Arriving in the current American milieu from out a period in history that obsessively lauded thin hope, our speaker in these poems can only question if hope is really there, or if it is even wise to gaze for it as though it is some sun blocked by clouds—‘I found my happiness not in the optics,/ a bit in the progress, a bit in the thinking.’ A welcome counterpoint of a book in this age of breakneck resistance and casual rage.” —Kyle Dargan, author of Anagnorisis and Honest Engine “‘Your ardor comes on like a pun,’ writes Kathleen Ossip in this constantly surprising, open-eyed collection, ‘making the most of / all possible significances.’ That she's so concerned with love in a book that reckons with political crisis suggests the peculiar depth of these poems. As she writes, ‘Boredom is a withdrawal / of attention. Pay attention!’ July charts something like the mechanics of human attentiveness, tracing the mind’s movement with maximum candor and in the process kicking open new doors of possibility for the poem.” —Jana Prikryl, author No Matter and The After Party “Helplessly encyclopedic, forever tender, unafraid of variety and willing to sound awkward in order to get real, this ample book unfolds ‘much joy and much happiness’ with its ‘what yes no,’ its depths, heights and desires, its ‘river of baroque pearls.’ ‘Anger better than complacence,’ the sequences here—first travel, then supple sonnets—find a Paradise inside and beside a near-future Inferno, a loving America that somehow ‘doesn’t fall.’ Raising a teenage daughter, living with and against her own white bourgeois privilege, touring the Upper Midwest and then the South and imagining ‘a ride in a Corvette,’ concluding that ‘Safety is something to give not take,’ Ossip’s work is extremely America, very right now, heartbreaking, not knowing what else we can do: I commend it to you.” —Stephanie Burt, author of Advice from the Lights and The Poet is You

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Book Synopsis Irresistible, wrote Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott when he selected Kathleen Ossip’s The Search Engine for the Honickman Prize from more than 1000 manuscripts. You feel like quoting her, Walcott continued, because she is . . . so fresh and so open. Ossip’s poetry is word-rich and music-lush, infused with fastidious hilarity and a genuine intelligence. It is a poetry of nerves, with a hunger for subtlety. She admits her influences easily, using pop songs and academic quotes in a self-confessed, even parodic search for her voice. As Richard Howard remarks: An astonishment, this first book, and what a comfort! Kathleen Ossip teaches at The New School. Her poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry and The Paris Review. She lives outside New York City.

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