Ours: Poems (Cloth First Edition)

Cole Swensen

ISBN 10: 0520254635 / ISBN 13: 9780520254633

Published by University of California Press, 2008

About this Item

Berkeley: University of California Press (2008) First edition. First printing. Hardbound/cloth. New. A pristing unread copy. This is the hardcover edition, issued without jacket, in a very small printing, probably less than 1,000. Part of the NEW CALIFORNIA POETRY SERIES, edited by Robert Hass, Calvin Bedient, Brenda Hillman, and Forrest Gander. Never opened. Smoke-free. Shipped in a well padded box You cannot find a better copy. 0.0.

Seller Inventory # leaf46

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Ours: Poems (Cloth First Edition)
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520254635
• ISBN 13: 9780520254633
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

About this title

Synopsis

These poems are about gardens, particularly the seventeenth-century French baroque gardens designed by the father of the form, Andre Le Notre. While the poems focus on such examples as Versailles, which Le Notre created for Louis XIV, they also explore the garden as metaphor. Using the imagery of the garden, Cole Swensen considers everything from human society to the formal structure of poetry. She looks in particular at the concept of public versus private property, asking who actually owns a garden? A gentle irony accompanies the question because in French, the phrase 'le notre' means 'ours'. Whereas all of Le Notre's gardens were designed and built for the aristocracy, today most are public parks. Swensen probes the two senses of 'le notre' to discover where they intersect, overlap, or blur.

About the Author

Cole Swensen is the author of eleven previous books of poetry. She is also a translator and has won the PEN USA Award in Literary Translation. Her poetry has won the Iowa Poetry Prize and the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, and she teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.