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The Caretaker’s Lament by Elisabeth Weiss

$14.49

“Elisabeth Weiss has written a marvelous sequence of poems. The Caretaker’s Lament shows us survival in the face of grief: the beginnings of renewal and the circularity of memory, dreams, and discoveries. Written with great delicacy, these poems speak of family life and carefully observed loss. Honesty, humor, empathy and intelligence inform the work. Lis Weiss brings a distinctive voice and perspective to this lyrical and moving collection. “

–Kathleen Spivack

With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Bishop,Plath,Sexton Kunitz and Others

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]

 

“The prose poem at the close of THE CARETAKER’S LAMENT fairly sums up the concerns and attitudes in the rest of the poems: which amount to the ways we reconcile with dead parents by forgiving them, and ourselves, our vulnerabilities in life; and the ways we process the value of the experience in a language of memory wholly committed to that moment.”

–Stanley Plumly

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]

 

Check out Elisabeth Weiss‘s updates and new publications at : http://www.elisabethaweiss.com

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]

 

“Elisabeth Weiss asks movingly in one of the many beautifully rendered and urgent poems of THE CARETAKER’S LAMENT: “What are we to do / with the knowledge // that fails to comfort / if you love this world?” Her work is rich with such knowledge—of history, of family, of loss—a fearless knowledge that refuses to turn away. In an elegy for her parents she writes the perfect pitch and fierce emotion: “My flesh is pulled back. / My grief is raw. / Your shoes are still by the door”—lines as unsparing and stark as myth or ritual. Lovingly out of such scars, to paraphrase one wonderful poem after Hafez, she has made jewels.”

–Daniel Tobin

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]

The Caretaker’s Lament

by Elisabeth Weiss

$14.49, paper

Elisabeth Weiss was born in Staten Island, New York.  She’s taught poetry in preschools, prisons, and nursing homes, as well as to the intellectually disabled. She graduated from Hamilton College 1980.  She’s worked in the editorial department at Harper & Row in New York and has an MFA from The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She’s published poems in London’s Poetry Review, Porch, Crazyhorse, the Birmingham Poetry Review, the Paterson Literary Review and many other journals. Lis won the Talking Writing Hybrid Poetry Prize for 2016 and was a runner up in the 2013 Boston Review poetry contest. Her chapbook, The Caretaker’s Lament, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016.

 

 

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