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In
the Room of Never Grieve:
New and Selected Poems
1985-2003
Reviews
Publishers
Weekly:
Picking
up where Helping the Dreamer: New and Selected Poems
1966-1988 left off, this second culling from Waldman's
vast oeuvre includes excerpts from Waldman's acclaimed
Fast-Speaking Woman, and arrives up-to-the-moment,
covering the Florida election debacle, September 11,
the 2003 war in Iraq, and the third and latest installation
of Waldman's ongoing epic exploration into maleness,
Iovis. If early work found her most engaged with the
New York School, these later poems integrate her passions
for Buddhism and ethnopoetics into a unique style of
vocal, unabashedly current-event-laden, collagistic,
wide-ranging work. Waldman's quest to find forms appropriate
to her shamanistic, didactic content is particularly
compelling in Marriage: A Sentence, with its
liquefied gender roles and synthesis of influences ranging
from Stein to Corso:
"That's
for sure for when you are married people people understand
understand you do not have to answer answer a doorbell
because sex sex may happen happen without delay delay.
You will hear everything twice, through your ears &
the ears of the other. Her or him as a case case may
be be. He & he & she & she as a case case
may be may be."
However,
it is Iovis, presented here in three consecutive
parts, in which Waldman's verbal dynamism and focused
political outrage begins, in Book I, as an exploration
of male-centered psychology, and evolves into an inquiry
into the discourse of war:
"what
is the sweetest war lore?
most terrible?
that of narration?
It's war crimes tribunal time."
With
an accompanying CD (not heard by PW), Waldman's untiring
efforts to link language, ritual and political action
come through clearly, urgently and often beautifully.
ForeWord:
"This poet picks up where Allen Ginsberg and H.D.
left off, bridging the gap between the Beats of the
'60s and the slam poets of today. Gathering more than
twenty years' worth of work, the collection chronicles
a lifetime of writing that is both celebratory and politically
aggressive. A CD accompanies the book, offering readers
a chance to hear Waldman's iconoclastic vocal stylings.…Waldman's
respect for the tradition of her art speaks powerfully
throughout the collection. There is always the sense
that the poet perceives her work in the context from
which it sprang-an oral tradition. Poems are meant to
be screamed or sung, never read silently in a corner.
Poetry, for this poet and activist, is a public practice,
and the accompanying CD corroborates the assertions
of the rhythms on the page."
"When
Allen Ginsberg passed from us it was Anne Waldman who
dutifully gathered up his many burdens, continuing his
work as poet, activist, and teacher. In following his
example she has bloomed as an example herself. How fortunate
we are to have her among us and may we all reach out
and take a small amount of her burden upon ourselves."-Patti
Smith
"Over
the years Anne Waldman's passionate commitment to poetry
has been exemplary. In book after book, she has worked
with a variety of forms-from pantoum to sestina to free
verse to haibun-and has found contemporary ways to modify
and extend the tradition. She can take the most seemingly
unpoetic material and spin it, harness it into a poem.
She sounds like no one else."-Arthur Sze
Rain
Taxi Review of Books:
"For such a risk-taking poet, a volume of selected
poems offers more than a chance to reevaluate; it is
a crucial communique to the culture at large, a statement
of poetics as much as a collection of poems."
City
Pages newsweekly:
"Anne Waldman wants to rearrange your infrastructure,
to reroute your neurons to the epicenter of the universe-to
awaken your heart. Given half a chance, she will....
There may be no other living poet who works harder or
at a more ferocious clip, whether on the page or in
person. She's a wildly adventurous and unpredictable
poet."
Minneapolis
Star Tribune:
"Waldman chants, rages and sings to the high heavens-on
the page and into the mike-in this dazzling display
of her poetic pyrotechnics."
Poetry
Project Newsletter:
"Waldman's work is too restless, inquisitive, and
expansive to be confined to the frettings of one temporal
moment. Yet how glad we are in New York to have her
back with us-her untiring efforts to push language past
the boundaries of oppression recenter us, erasing our
doubts and hesitations, reminding us just how very much
there is to do and that poetry is alive with the lights
of possibility."
Also
available by this author:
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