At the Site of Inside Out

by Anna Rabinowitz

The poems in this volume are electric with energy and rich with linguistic invention. Anna Rabinowitz's voice, which ranges from reflective to prophetic, from passionate to wry, shapes and reshapes language to complete the partial, retrieve the lost, and salvage what remains when the human body and the bodies of family, culture, and history threaten to collapse. These are poems that confront loss and celebrate survival in a world that is "context and collage, icon and diehard, push and pull, conceived and holding on."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1558490930
• ISBN13: 9781558490932
• Release Date: May 1997
• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Length: 88 Pages
• Weight: 0.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A Good Site Better than Average

From the moment you see the acknowledgements of this book citing previous publication in The Paris Review, Best American Poetry , The Denver Quarterly, Sulfur, and more, you have a clear indication that Anna Rabinowitz is a serious, high caliber poet worth reading. Her poems don't disappoint. Her opening poem, "Blow the Dome," is an ABC-darium that foretells the vibrant, unexpected and effective language and images of the poems in the rest of the book: "Language in the language of the language, movement as the speech that does not lie." From the start, we see that unlike so many contemporary poets who spend pages and pages contemplating their navels (and who knows what other private parts) Rabinowitz is clearly interested in language, thought, and intellect, rather than in simply re-hashing her own emotional baggage. Not that her work doesn't have emotional impact. "Fragile Dialectics" is an almost frighteningly chilling view of aging. "Two women finger the fans of their cards. The blonde's bones soften at the bast of her spine...the redheads skull is inlaid with a metal plate the size of a three-by-five index card." Her "Confession" is clean and startling. "Anatomy Lab" is clinical, yet somehow moving. And her poems about art, artists, and creating show that she is an artist herself, fully capable of not only understanding, but conveying the artistic process.The centerpiece of the book, a long piece called "Dislocations" is an at times emotionally harrowing, at times journalistically removed, and consistently insightful chronicle of the author's visit to post WWII eastern Europe, including family remembrances, and visits to concentration camps. "Crawl into our eyes. They hoard what we remember," intones her Greek (Jewish?) chorus of 6 million dead.This is not poetry for the faint of heart. And it certainly isn't poetry of the "roses are red," Hallmark card-loving crowd. These poems make you think, feel, and yes, sometimes work. But in the end, it's all worth it - to hear the intelligent voice of an accomplished poet who is unafraid to expose her own emotions, explore the artistic process, and delve into intellectual issues that make us all think.Anna Rabinowitz, like Duchamps Nude Descending a Staircase, in her poem "Descent" is a woman who "troops down to step out."

A passionate, formally inventive, necessary book

So many beauties in this ambitious, accomplished, lyrical collection. The mind is limber and so are the lines: "...ships in a black storm, / vocabularies churning at sea..." There's wit galore, as in "Golem Recipe ... Yields one servant YHWH" and a mordant survey of past and present "time when history ferments in bruised casks..." Not a painter of small canvases, Rabinowitz takes an unsparing look at the way we (too often) live now, "...slave to the common habit / humans have, though companionable, of living out only the personal story." But her own concerns are large and her gifts glorious, delivering us back into a world in which "Against all odds, and past their prime, lychnis, astilbe, lythrum pitch fresh bloom headlong into pale gardens..." Highly recommended!