Glass Armonica: Poems
An exquisitely crafted” third collection of poems, this winner of the second-annual Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry offers a prismatic portrait of the female body in the act of being touched” (G.C. Waldrep)The 18th-century glass armonica, a musical instrument whose sound emits from rotating...
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An exquisitely crafted” third collection of poems, this winner of the second-annual Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry offers a prismatic portrait of the female body in the act of being touched” (G.C. Waldrep)The 18th-century glass armonica, a musical instrument whose sound emits from rotating water-filled vessels, has long held the power to mesmerize with its hauntingly sorrowful tones. Just as its song, which was once thought to induce insanity, wraps itself in and around the mind, Rebecca Dunham probes the depths of human psyche, inhabiting the voices of historical female "hysterics" and inciting in readers a tranquil unease. These are poems spoken through and for the melancholic, the hysteric, the body dysmorphic from Mary Glover to Lavinia Dickinson to Freud's famed patient, Dora. And like expert hands placed gently on the armonica’s rotating disks, Dunham offers unsettling depictions of uninvited human contact of hands laid upon the female body, of touch at times unwanted, and ultimately unspeakable from behind the hysteric's "locked jaws." Winner of the 2013 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, Dunham’s stunning third collection is "lush yet septic" (G.C. Waldrep), at once beautiful and unnerving.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9781571314666 (1571314660)
Publish date: December 3rd 2013
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Pages no: 96
Edition language: English
This is a truly haunting, and at times creepy, collection. Many of these poems center on the ways women have been, and can be, invaded by the touch of others. She writes about hysterics, sexual abuse, and medicine (amongst other things). The title plays into this theme, invoking the glass armonica. ...