Transcript of the Disappearance, Exact and Diminishing: Poems (Pitt Poetry Series) - Softcover

Emanuel, Lynn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822967189 ISBN 13: 9780822967187

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023

Synopsis

A Poetic Autobiography―Intimate, Sorrowful, and Funny Lynn Emanuel’s sixth collection of poetry is not sequential or straightforward. It has no conventional chronology, no master narrative. Instead, it is a life story, with all the chaos and messiness entailed therein. Transcript of the Disappearance, Exact and Diminishing is a commotion of grief and wit, audacious images, poems, and paragraphs. It explores and centers on the possibilities and limitations of art in the face of disappearances of many kinds, including the disappearance that is most personal―the poet’s own.

About this title

About the Author

Lynn Emanuel is the author of four previous books of poetry: Hotel Fiesta, The Dig, Then, SuddenlyÑ, and, most recently, Noose and Hook. Her work has been featured in The Pushcart Prize Anthology and The Best American Poetry numerous times and is include

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

—PLAGUE’S MONOLOGUE 

 

I erased the world so nothing can find it, snuffed out the roses, red and hot  

as the snouts of bombs, repealed the polar ice cap, even that fat oxymoron,  

the “industrial park,” has disappeared. And the last few words huddled  

together, like bees in a hive buzzing and plotting? I cut their throats  

with the scythe of a comma, turned the snout of my pen against them.  

I saved by erasing the streets and the people—let them be overgrown  

with absence. I don’t care—there is no limit to my appetite, my lust,  

my zeal for emptiness. But I know you—and you have kept a transcript 

of the disappearance. 

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822967189
• ISBN 13: 9780822967187
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80