Back Through Interruption: Poems

by Kate Northrop

This collection of poetry takes the reader through a world that is at once beautiful and tragic, sacrosanct and profane. The poems are drawn ineluctably to the place where passion and intelligence... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0873387414
• ISBN13: 9780873387415
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Kent State University Press
• Length: 63 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.1" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Fantastic debut.

Kate Northrop, Back Through Interruption (Kent State University Press, 2002) There's something wonderful about Kate Northrop's poetry, something missing from much of what I've been reading recently, but I couldn't put my finger on it until, while looking Northrop up in preparation for this review, I came across another review of the book that defined it: space. Northrop's pieces somehow avoid the density of the common poem without hearkening back to pre-modernist days. There's a good deal here, mind you, but it's presented in almost spare, windblown style, despite never straying far from the poetic mantra of "image, image, image." "When he enters the room, the walls darken, just slightly, and a cloud covers the lake. But nobody notices. The party's already started, and our hosts, dreamlike, serve up the last of the summer cocktails to gorgeous guests...." ("The Murderer") An excellent collection, one well worth checking out. Kate Northrop is going places. ****

Compelling, Gorgeous Poems

"Back Through Interruption" is the kind of book which requires you to have two copies. The first copy lives on your shelf of favorite books, so you can return to it, as you will. The second copy you'll want so that you can carefully tear out individual poems to fold up and keep in your back pocket to read whenever you have the chance. "Back Through Interruption" explores how ephemeral the world seems when we feel most alive. Northrop's voice is unique, confident, and just beautiful.

Excellent stuff

I went into this page to correct a potentially mistaken impression of this book. When I bought it, Billy What's His Name was the only link established from Northrop and that was really unfortunate. I followed the link and read Billy C. and couldn't for the life of me see what he had in common with Northrop. Kate Northrop is an excellent poet, one of the few newer ones I've been able to locate that honestly pleases me and holds my attention (I count Paul Muldoon, WS Merwin, and Anne Waldman among my favorite living poets, only ones superior to Northrop, my 5-stars). She, Kate Northrop, reminds me more of Pierre Reverdy (in Rexroth's translation) than anyone else...others with a sense of ellipsis, emptiness, mobile-like cohesion maybe are Snyder, Rothenberg, Zukofsky. Buy it if you like poetry that walks an edge between the illegible and the obsessively formal, and read it. I'm happy to see links established from her to Ted Berrigan (totally makes sense)and Larry Levis (oddly makes sense too). Now I'll have to check out Loren Goodman. Anyway, the title of Northrop's book is telling. You'll take trips with her back to places in an uncertain suburban past, but the interruptions are more like gigantic pot-holes in the road you might well fall into--more thrilling than disorienting--you know, like, "his thought made pockets and the plane bucked"...Saw her first in APR while bored between clients at a Borders and her three poems there made my day. I was not disappointed by following up with this collection and I'm looking forward to more in the future. But this book.

Beautiful

This collection is a wonderful example of modern poetry still suceeding in the poetic quest to stir emotion. These poems will leave you with that wonderful thrill through their meaning and word choices. You will read and reread and recomend to others!

Gorgeous - A Contemporary Masterpiece!

"Back Through Interruption" is a journey into silence, darkness, wind & trees, snow, outlines, dusk & ampersands. The landscape is always hazy, where objects may appear for a moment before returning back into the mist. The physics of Northrop's world consist of transience - of expectations - and while certainly things happen within the poems there's more pressure on what's *going* to happen. These are portraits of 'moments before.' As "The Advice of the Dream" says, "It's important to stay unattached / to an actual happening."The first thing that most readers will notice about "Back Through Interruption" is how delightful it *sounds*. Northrop's attention to the music of language is astounding. While her poems aren't in traditional, static form, there is much internal rhyme, luscious assonance, and words that bond well together. Northrop puts pressure on certain lines by including a heavier rhyme 'glue' to hold a line together, as in "The Wife" - "desire widened inside--" or in a few lines of "The Visitor" someone is seen "in the picture window, thin / and distant like the glimpse / of a surfacing fish."Kate Northrop's "Back Through Interruption" is a remarkable first book. Each poem demonstrates her ability to let air move through the poem - to use silence as another form of punctuation. The results are intriguing, mysterious, accurate, and in most cases, quite beautiful.