The Character

by Jena Osman

Book Overview

The poems in Jena Osman's first volume embody the poem as performance, revealing the tensions between narrative coherence and Brechtian self-consciousness, and our constitution by "characters" of all... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807068470
• ISBN13: 9780807068472
• Release Date: May 1999
• Publisher: Beacon Press (MA)
• Length: 108 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Jena Osman is awake and she wakes us up

The Character does not permit us the stasis necessary to sustain a single interpretation. Jena Osman does not begin with the struggle of the line. Instead, she subverts our notions of closure with, in the words of poet Amy Catanzano, a form "that is both circular and layered." By using the gloriously belligerent methodolgies of diverse linguistic traditions,she produces a space for great freedoms and madness in the realm of poetry. I would like to give her three thousand dollars to go to China and return with a hypertext haiku!