Diane Seuss Livres

Diane Seuss's poems grow out of the fertile soil of southwest Michigan, bursting any and all stereotypes of the Midwest and turning loose characters worthy of Faulkner in their obsession, their suffering, their dramas of love and sex and death.

WINNER OF THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY WINNER OF THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR POETRY WINNER OF THE 2022 PEN/VOELCKER AWARD FOR POETRY COLLECTION WINNER OF THE 2021 LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR POETRY A resplendent life in sonnets from the author of Four-Legged Girl, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize “The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do / without,” Diane Seuss writes in this brilliant, candid work, her most personal collection to date. These poems tell the story of a life at risk of spilling over the edge of the page, from Seuss’s working-class childhood in rural Michigan to the dangerous allures of New York City and back again. With sheer virtuosity, Seuss moves nimbly across thought and time, poetry and punk, AIDS and addiction, Christ and motherhood, showing us what we can do, what we can do without, and what we offer to one another when we have nothing left to spare. Like a series of cels on a filmstrip, frank: sonnets captures the magnitude of a life lived honestly, a restless search for some kind of “beauty or relief.” Seuss is at the height of her powers, devastatingly astute, austere, and—in a word—frank.

With these dark, triumphant poems, Diane Seuss takes us on a journey through the landscape of the soul and it's a world full of beauty and violence in equal parts. Relentless and incantatory, these poems are charged with an almost religious intensity as Seuss looks for God's presence in nature and sexuality. Again and again the poet confronts whatever it is that guides us through a life that is sensuous, yet exacting in its terrible cost. Nothing is solved by the end of this book, but much is gained as the quest itself has become a victory of perfectly pitched and furious language. God's still hidden away, but by now the natural world has evolved to replace the absence Seuss feels. In the book's erotically charged universe, one paradoxically begins to feel a calm settle over the burned-up panorama of the soul. It Blows You Hollow is a book, rare these days, that feels as if it had to be written. Diane Seuss goes for broke."

Seuss provides a moving account of her picaresque years and their uncertainties, and in the process, she enters the realm between modernism and romanticism, between romance and objectivity, with Keats as ghost, lover, and interlocutor.

Von der Kindheit in der Arbeiterklasse im ländlichen Michigan bis hin zu den gefährlichen Verlockungen von New York City: Virtuos bewegt sich Diane Seuss durch Gedanken und Zeit, Poesie und Punk, AIDS und Sucht, Glaube und Mutterschaft. Neben der eigenen Biographie spielen ihr Sohn, dessen Drogensucht und Selbstmordversuch, der frühe Tod des Vaters und eine distanzierte Mutter sowie ein an Aids verstorbener naher Freund eine Rolle. Trotz drastischer biographischer Erfahrungen verliert Seuss nicht den Humor. In ihrem mal scho­nungslos ehrlichen, mal politisch-pointierten oder lyrisch-verspielten Witz steckt aber auch eine Verletzung, ein Schmerz. In diesen Momenten wird der Humor zum Werkzeug, zum Mittel, um ein an Enttäuschungen reiches Leben zu bewältigen. Weitere Auszeichnungen: • 2021 John Updike Preis • 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award für Lyrik • 2021 PEN / Voelcker Award für Poetry Collection • 2022 Los Angeles Times Book Preis für Lyrik • 2022 Pulitzer-Preis für Dichtung Finalistin für the den: • 2022 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award