Skip to content

Noted: Poetry as a cure for a hangover.

By RICHARD DEMING [Boston Review] – The poems of Ann Lauterbach’s Or to Begin Again probe the difficult questions—ethical, emotional, political, and even spiritual—of accounting for despair while allowing for it to become something more than a mechanism pressing the death drive forward. How do any of us, Lauterbach’s poems ask, begin again without turning our backs on catastrophic events, events that, like a bad dream, seem to continue to shape and define the present and our sense of a possible—or impossible—future? How does one respond to the world, then, in the aftermath of the aftermath?

Lauterbach’s response provides neither solace nor an occasion to share righteous indignation. She has a sense of hope, but she wants it to be something more than sentimental naïveté—otherwise, from the hope we seek, we may get simply the despair we deserve. And this is where poetry comes in.

Continued at the Boston Review | More Chronicle & Notices.

This Fortnightly Review article is filed under the following rubrics: Chronicle & Notices.
Publication: Thursday, 19 August 2010, at 22:47.
Options: Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *
*
*

The Fortnightly Review