Horse Fair, The: Poems (Pitt Poetry Series) - Softcover

Becker, Robin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822957205 ISBN 13: 9780822957201

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000

Synopsis

In this collection, Robin Becker investigates how people marginalized because of gender, religion and sexual preference negogiate public and private spheres while inventing sustainable communities. He produces a number of multi-voiced, synthetic portraits.

About this title

Review

"Robin Becker's The Horse Fair, her fifth collection, may be her best yet. From its opening, these poems demonstrate a spare elegance in the line, and many phrases are simply breathtaking in their imagery, compression, music, and emotive power."
--Arts & Culture

"Becker seems to have found a kind of bittersweet peace for herself. . . . This generous poet is never less than attentive and responsive to the world that surrounds her."

--The New York Times Book Review

"Through a wide variety of forms, Becker's strong yet soulful voice is especially adept at studying people forced to coexist on the fringe."

--Orlando Sentinel

"Throughout The Horse Fair, Becker's painstaking, empathic use of language celebrates a patient yet intrepid dedication to art as well as the indomitable spirit of life---human or otherwise---in the face of oppression and death. . . . The Horse Fair contains Robin Becker's strongest poetry to date."

--West Branch

"What I love in Robin Becker's poems is how much the world is with her; characters, histories, animals, places, and things crowd onto these pages, inscribing them with the cries of the living. Becker is against silence; she instructs the world, instead, to 'Harpsichord me. Entail me. Depose me' in these shapely poems marked by her curious, tender, worldly presence."

--Mark Doty

"It's hard to know where to begin praising this collection, it contains so many virtues: unremitting, intellectual brilliance and acute historical understanding, especially about being an outsider and a survivor. I go to Robin Becker's poetry as I might go to a great novelist like George Eliot or Carol Shields--to experience the news they bring back from the world and its interpretation by a major mind."

--Jonathan Holden

"I treasure these redemptive poems by Robin Becker, who writes with compassion and amazing vitality about the grief, afflictions, and foibles of trees, animals, and humans bound together on this dangerous planet. Her book is an exquisite manual on how to live."

--Shirley Kaufman

"Describing a woodpecker, Robin Becker writes, 'Far-flung orbit of energy . . . a restless aptitude drives her hungers . . .' She could just as well be describing her own far flung imagination, her own hungers made manifest in language. The Horse Fair is a beautifully crafted book, wise and forgiving."

--Linda Pastan

About the Author

Robin Becker is professor of English and women's studies at The Pennsylvania State University, is the author of six collections of poetry, including The Horse Fair, All-American Girl, and Giacometti's Dog. In 2002, the Frick Art and Historical Center in Pittsburgh published Venetian Blue, a limited-edition chapbook of Becker's art poems. Becker is the recipient of individual fellowships from the Bunting Institute, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2000, she won the George W. Atherton III Award for Excellence in Teaching from Penn State.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0822957205
• ISBN 13: 9780822957201
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 104