Infanta

by Erin Belieu

Overview

Chosen for the National Poetry Series by Hayden Carruth. Erin Belieu has an uncanny knack for listening and for locating the perspective of various others within her poems. Armed with humor, anger, and sensuality, she fuses the discursive methods of fiction to a lyric impulse, resulting in a remarkable book of portraits, mostly of people caught in ungainly moments of failure and self-revelation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556591013
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	04/01/1995
Series:	National Poetry Series
Pages:	150
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d)

Editorial Reviews

Selected for the National Poetry Series by Hayden Carruth, Belieu's first book achieves a delicate balance between personal experience and the observation of others'; each perspective doubles in power by being reflected in its opposite. Though laced through with fierce words and harsh subjects, these poems contain a gentleness that leans toward lyricism. After fending off an attempted rape, the speaker sees her attacker walking away, a ``pathetic silhouette.'' The poet searches for sensuality in a wide assortment of voices: one speaker finds beauty in simply being able ``to fit/ the curve your body questions,'' while in a fairy-tale poem ``Rose Red,'' a young woman contrives to lie with a bear "innocently/ at first, then not so, curled behind him,/ running her thumbnail down his spine.'' With offhanded rhyme and specific forms, e.g., a rondeau, Belieu enhances the effect of her poems' highly original content. (May)

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