In this powerful sequence of TV images and essay, Claudia Rankine explores the personal and political unrest of our volatile new century "I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes" "me the saddest. The sadness is not really about" "George W. or our American optimism; the" "sadness lives in the recognition that a life can" "not matter." The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric, the essay, and the visual in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America. With wit and intelligence, Rankine strives toward an unprecedented clarity-of thought, imagination, and sentence-making-while arguing that recognition of others is the only salvation for ourselves, our art, and our government. "Don't Let Me Be Lonely" is an important new confrontation with our culture, with a voice at its heart bewildered by its inadequacy in the face of race riots, terrorist attacks, medicated depression, and the antagonism of the television that won't leave us alone. Claudia Rankine is the author of three previous collections of poetry: "Nothing in Nature Is Private," "The End of the Alphabet," and "Plot." She is also the co-editor of "American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language." Rankine teaches in the writing program at the University of Houston. Finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize Poet Claudia Rankine, widely celebrated for her experimental multi-genre writing, fuses the lyric poem, the essay, and the visual image in "Don't Let Me Be Lonely." This is a politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America. With wit and intelligence, and with much heart, Rankine presents an extended self-conversation that always strives toward clarity--of thought, of imagination--while also arguing that recognition of others is the only salvation for ourselves, our art, and our government. "Don't Let Me Be Lonely" is an important new confrontation with our culture, delivered in a voice that is strong yet bewildered in the face of race riots, terrorist attacks, medicated depression, and the antagonism of the television that just won't leave us alone. "Out of short prose segments with the gravity of poetry, avant-garde poet Rankine assembles a very direct and moving meditation on Americans and death. A friend's cancer, accounts of Rankine's dreams, 9/11, documents about the African AIDS crisis, and many other elements flow together like the motifs in the slow movement of a Beethoven symphony."--"Utne Reader" ""Don't Let Me Be Lonely" is a success, possessing a clarity [whereby the author] has graced us not only with her presence, but the ability to make ourselves present--to separate our consciousness from the droning media that drowns out life's possibilities."--"The Star Tribune" (Minneapolis) "Claudia Rankine here manages an extraordinary melding of means to effect the most articulate and moving testament to the bleak times we live in I've yet seen. This is a master work in every sense, and altogether her own."--Robert Creeley