The Invention Of Everyday Life - Softcover

Raab, Lawrence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1963908333 ISBN 13: 9781963908336

Publisher: Spuyten Duyvil Publishing, 2024

Synopsis

There’s nobody else writing quite like Lawrence Raab, with his confident, efficient elegance, about the mysterious ways in which what we think and what can be known so often betray one another. In this marvelous new poem, “The Invention of Everyday Life,” we find the poet recounting several seemingly unrelated stories, each interrupting, then mixing with another story, slyly and slowly involving us with the desires and deceptions of his characters. We meet the jilted lover, Pierre; an explorer whose tale may or may not be true; a frustrated art critic; the eccentric artist Kurt Schwitters who makes art by hiding things; the narrator’s wife, who at the end says, “Trust me…” But who or what can we trust in a world “concealed… by its own appearance.”? Raab is mum about the answer—It’s our job to take on the role of the necessary detective in this tour de force of storytelling.
Rolly Kent

About this title

About the Author

Lawrence Raab is the author of ten books of poems, including Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts (Tupelo, 2015), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and named one of the Ten Best Poetry Books of 2015 by The New York Times, and What We Don't Know About Each Other (Penguin, 1993), a winner of the National Poetry Series and a finalist for the 1993 National Book Award. His latest collection is April at the Ruins (Tupelo, 2022). Why Don't We Say What We Mean?, essays about poetry, appeared in 2016. He is the Harry C. Payne Professor of Poetry Emeritus at Williams College.

Edition details

• Publisher: Spuyten Duyvil Publishing
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1963908333
• ISBN 13: 9781963908336
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 38