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Books
Caitlin Bailey

Solve for Desire

A debut poetry collection exploring the real lives of siblings Georg and Grete Trakl while addressing themes of desire, addiction, loss, and absence.
Georg Trakl is one of the most celebrated poets of the early twentieth century. Less is known about his sister, Grete: also gifted, also addicted to drugs, and dead by her own hand three years after Georg’s overdose. But in Solve for Desire—selected by Srikanth Reddy as the winner of the 2017 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry—Caitlin Bailey summons Grete from the shadows. At once sensual and acidic, obsessive and bereft, the Grete of these poems is a fairy-tale sister leaving “missives dropped around the city, crumbs / for your ghost.”
Can one person be addicted to another? Can two souls be twinned, and where does that leave the physical? How do we solve for desire when the object we adore disappears—and how does the poet solve and resolve the past, its wounds and its absences? “Each time I write your name,” Bailey writes, “a key / turns somewhere in a lock.” Like the “perfect red burst” of poppies and of blood, these poems are a blooming, keening exploration of desire between brother and sister, poet and subject, the living and the dead.
Praise for Solve for Desire
“The work of a poet who sings, boldly, across the distances between us.” —Srikanth Reddy
“A sobering look at desire, addiction, loss, and absence in this debut collection of short, lyric poems that are by turns lush and understated, lofty and plainspoken. . . . She performs a kind of feminist resuscitation of the lesser-known Grete, focusing on small moments of quiet, grief, lust, and memory, and fleshing out a story that is still disputed” —Publishers Weekly
“This precarious, satisfyingly disjointed debut collection of poetry captures the spirit of the [Trakl] siblings. . . . Bailey’s brilliantine lyrics shine brightest when the siblings’ characters are wrought in full relief.” —Booklist
29 бумажных страниц
Дата публикации оригинала
2017
Год выхода издания
2017
Издательство
Milkweed Editions
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Впечатления

  • Malena Tejedaделится впечатлениемв прошлом году
    👍Worth reading
    🎯Worthwhile
    🐼Fluffy

    A mi me ha encantado, cada poema lo sentí personal.

Цитаты

  • Malena Tejedaцитируетв прошлом году
    After everything,
    you were the only thing left on my heart. In the world
    we were meant for: the ghost of our loss and what comes after.
  • Malena Tejedaцитируетв прошлом году
    I sun myself under you
  • Malena Tejedaцитируетв прошлом году
    Everything
    that’s ever been said about constellations exists inside my chest.

На полках

  • Crystal Vega-Huerta
    Poetry
    • 89
    • 1
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