The Hut (excerpt)
The day I cried for Baudelai re I had been drinking a little the discovery that th ere is no orthodoxy — it took place in wh ich hotel room? I no longer unde rstood my face I did not then know that t he metaphysical stamina which I then discov ered that I possessed would become my dearest possession. I was ambitious a nd tired. I began with the assumption that th e work was already complete so anything coul d be added to it. Black ink shall be us ed on white paper blue ink sh all be used violet ink shall be u sed on ivory paper also dul l pencil eternal sadness regarding lo st grand unfinished projects their belated discovery — this shall be flaunted inexpertlyI could almost hear the ping of moths against the streetlamps near the public garden. Now the public garden takes the form o f everyone's kiss. Neo-Liberal ideals are completely non-erotic.
Feature Date
- February 2, 2023
Series
- Editor's Choice
Selected By
- Heather Green
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“The Hut (excerpt)” from BOAT: by Lisa Robertson.
Published by Coach House Books in May 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by Lisa Robertson.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Lisa Robertson is a Canadian poet and essayist. Born in Toronto in 1961, she was a longtime resident of Vancouver, where in the early 90s she began writing, publishing and collaborating in a community of artists and poets that included Artspeak Gallery and The Kootenay School of Writing. She has continued these activities for 30 years, publishing books, leaflets and posters, translating poetry and linguistics from French, lecturing and teaching internationally, and continuing her ongoing study into the political constitution of lyric voice. In 2017 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Letters by Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and in 2018, the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts in NY awarded her the inaugural CD Wright Award in Poetry. She has taught at Cambridge University, Princeton, UC Berkeley, California College of the Arts, Piet Zwart Institute, Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and American University of Paris, as well as holding research and residency positions at institutions across Canada, the US, and Europe. Lisa currently lives in France.
“Robertson has quietly but surely emerged as one of our most exciting and prolific philosophers—I mean poets. Interested in architecture, weather systems, fashion, autobiography, gender, the classics, and just about everything else, she manages to irradiate her subjects with calm, wit, and astonishing beauty. Robertson’s style is both on splendid display and under fierce interrogation in her latest book, R’s Boat. ”
—Kenyon Review
“In R’s Boat, Robertson has penned a post-conceptual, post-lyric, relentlessly self-examining performance of memory and sincerity that manages, remarkably, to be both theoretically concerned and deeply emotive. ”
—Harvard Review
“R's Boat grapples with form, the constraint of language and tradition, and the challenge to avoid anything that might exist as template. The poems examine feminism, discourse, the body, and poetry itself through sumptuous, seductive language. ”
—American Poets
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