Coeur de Lion

by Ariana Reines

Now that I am not addressing you
But the “you” of poetry
I am probably doing something horrible and destructive.
But this “I” is the I of poetry
And it should be able to do more than I can do.

Just a few months after the publication of her prize-winning, instant classic debut The Cow, Ariana Reines self-published this stunning book-length poem, now a cult object among readers of truly contemporary poetry. Coeur de Lion is an intensely personal, monologic meditation on longing, sex, and love between a speaker and the object of all her passions, which include thinking and writing.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Literature, Queer, The United States Of America

95 pages, Paperback

First published March 14, 2008

About the author

Ariana Reines is the author of The Cow (Alberta Prize, FenceBooks: 2006), Coeur de Lion (Mal-O-Mar: 2007; Fence: 2011), and MERCURY (Fence: forthcoming fall 2011), plus the LP/audiobook SAVE THE WORLD starring Lili Taylor (Fence: forthcoming spring 2011).


Volumes of translation include My Heart Laid Bare by Charles Baudelaire, (Mal-O-Mar:2009), The Little Black Book of Grisélidis Réal: Days and Nights of an Anarchist Whore by Jean-Luc Hennig, (Semiotext(e): 2009), and the forthcoming Preliminary Notes Toward a Theory of the YoungGirl by TIQQUN, (Semiotext(e): 2012).


TELEPHONE, her first play, was commissioned and produced by The Foundry Theatre and presented at The Cherry Lane Theatre in New York, February 2009. The production won two Obies and a spin-off was featured in the Works+Process series at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Fall 2009. TELEPHONE was be published in Fall 2009 in PLAY: A Journal of Plays.

Reviews

[C.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I DEVOURED this book as soon as I pulled it out of the POBox! LUCKILY I didn't have to go to my stupid job and could sit in the park and READ READ READ IT with all the pain and pleasure it deserves having when read!

So many unexpected FREAKISH, BEAUTIFUL moments it's hard to put a finger to it. Here's one particular moment (JUST WHEN sex in poems was getting redundant and boring THIS SUCH STANZA):


I did it a few
Times when I was
Eighteen. My hole
Is just another
Hole in the world
I said in my head
My hole is just
Another hole
In the world.
After a while it
Wasn't that
Bad. But sometimes
Still when somebody tries
To fuck
Me in there I
Cry.


When Reines BREAKS at the end with "Cry" the use of first-letter first-word capitalization makes TOTAL sense and makes capitalization worth it! Reines WILLS a sense of urgency to what we're often tired of hearing, and sits us straight in our chairs to listen! In some ways CHOOSING such things AND DOING IT BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE is the real challenge, and she does it, and GETS IT, and GETS US GOOD!

Wow, this book is stunning, start-to-finish it is! Makes me want to read EVERYTHING SHE WRITES!

CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com

[Emily Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this in Montreal from a very beautiful french girl, and I mumbled the title, fearful that she would know that I was not bilingual and therefore daft and dull, and as dreaded she made me repeat it five times, until she finally found the legible part of what I was trying to say, and then we gushed about Ariana, and I charged it all to my credit card with great glee.

[Carrie Lorig · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's so important that there are women.

[Daniel Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love words
Cos they’re so weak
(Repeat)

[Alan Ke · Rating 5 out of 5]

i feel so

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just read the new Fence version and it was full of startling moments and bare-ass naked truth. This is one of those books (along with other "personal" poetic volumes like Ghost Machine and Greg Sherl's I Have Touched You) that was the perfect thing for me to read right now. Raunchy, sexy, confessional beauty. Can't wait to read more of her work and to see her read one day. I've heard that her readings are crazed!

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ariana Reines wrote the best book of the year, and 2009 will have to work hard to top this, and hell, most other years too. Coeur de Lion isn't just 'great,' it's Great. Read it, talk about it, spread the word!

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is, like, ubiquitous in poetry, but it annoys me so much when poets lean on references to and quotes from other artists and writers to supply the depth and emotional range in their poems, especially when they close out a stanza or poem with words from someone else. In this book-length poem, which is about a love affair between two writers, I guess it makes sense that the lovers would talk a lot about authors they read and works they like, but I feel annoyed when poets invoke Leonard Cohen to make me think about how great Leonard Cohen is, as if that makes their poem as great as anything Leonard Cohen ever did. Nabokov is also serving the same function here. This poem isn't even the worst offender of this... but I'm over it. Also it's hard to appreciate a love affair from outside of it, but the man Reines is in love with sure sounds awful here.

[Leanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this much more than "The Cow." The self-consciousness, while still present, is to a lesser and more productive degree. "Coeur de Lion" is basically about a love affair gone awry between the poet and one "Jake". It takes us through the poet's graduate school in Europe and some time in New York. She is poor and she and Jake have a lot of non-vanilla sex and she goes through his email account and pisses him off. Both have other lovers at home while they are in Europe (are they both cheating? Unclear). Lots of references to Gmail, Gchat, Youtube, popular indie music (Leonard Cohen!) and hip French lit and lit theory. Could have done without the last, but I suppose it's an authentic part of the poet's life! Still, that kind of stuff just oozes pretension to me. I was glad that this book didn't navel gaze about signification like "The Cow" did.

This book (basically one long poem) appealed to me on many levels. Voyeuristically, I enjoyed this window into the life of a woman about my age, with some of my interests, who sometimes writes about New York, where I used to live. She namedrops her friends in a very New York School of Poets kind of way. She conveys the heartbreak of the end of her relationship very honestly--I felt it. I related. I'm not sure where the power derives--maybe in the straightforwardness of the poetry, perhaps in the understated lyrical moments, perhaps in her ability to clearly describe small, important moments and the emotional impact. But this was stuff of the human heart.

I still think she can get too hip--there's a faux-grittiness to some of this (like, okay, I believe you were poor, but c'mon, you've had two books of poetry published and you must be under thirty--obviously there have been some good and rewarding things in your life) and her musical and literary tastes are very very much those of your average (admittedly highly educated) hipster intellectual.

Still! I sat down and read this in one reading, and she drew me into her world. Anyone who is in their twenties and has had a complicated, passionate relationship go sour (and haven't we all) is going to find a a moving and unforgiving portrait of that in this book.

[Delia Rainey · Rating 5 out of 5]

i closed this book and said "FML" outloud to my friend, who didn't know what it meant: "fuck my life." maybe this is a revenge book about an affair like 'i love dick' by chris kraus, cursed with literary, mythical, and philosophical references throughout. ariana always feels like my fellow "pretentious gypsy Jewess goth" friend and to be in her thoughts forever feels similar to being in my own thoughts forever. there's something so funny about heterosexual obsession with men who tape American Apparel ads to their wall, or mention The Lion King on top of a mountain on a hike, i don't know. as she questions what it means to never have total freedom of your feelings and fears, this book made me sad. my dream is to someday get my fortune/horoscope read by ariana, i think she already knows me well.

[Juliet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this.

At times, I felt like some kind of a voyeur reading it--but not a voyeur of sleaze; more like a voyeur of open authenticity.

There are lots of parts I like. Here is one of them:

The words on a page
In an open book
Looked stupid to
Me when I was little
Unless I was right up close
To them. They looked
Weak; barely
There.
It made me nervous
That in order
For words on a page
To have power
I had to be close.
I had to be close.

This book puts me in mind of someone I know and semi-secretly love but cannot fully have. A secret love both painful and affirmative.

But how could she be so open about it? Wow.

[Brian Henderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picking up where the confessionals left off (oh dear, must we?) Rienes charts an aggressively dictioned path through, you guessed it — the breakup of an affair, though that’s not likely the word she’d use; more likely “fuck fest with a remote possibility of something like love”. The book reads like a long Facebook poem. “Where literature / is concerned, ha, ha," she says, “I’ve still / got work to do.”

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Voice? I felt like she was sitting talking to me. To borrow a word from one of my favorite sources; "Unbestopable!"

[Lucas]

i moaned.

[Niki Chataljdkian · Rating 3 out of 5]

mixed emotions. loved some quotes, hated her sometimes (because of loving a jerk maybe) i kept thinking she had hairy armpits

[Núria Costa · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can a book begin setting the bar so high, and creating another one even higher by the end of it?
Mind-blown for how good this was.

Reading it aloud it's satisfying.

[Grace Kao · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really.... did not like this. Am I missing something? This was like competent internet poetry, with mad line breaks thrown in to affect a sense of hip alienation.

[William · Rating 2 out of 5]

.

[Sophie]

“I had missed half of Alain Badiou’s lectures messing around with you”

She’s literally writing this poem sitting up the back of the lecture hall while being taught by Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, and Avital Ronell (over the course of a week or so, I assume). Kind of have to give her props. I found her pretty gross but I liked the contrast between the rawness/carnality of her grossness (e.g. admitting that Jake told her that her pussy smelled like Swiss cheese–why he would even SAY that idk) and the centrality of emails, which contextualise it within the period. I didn’t think the poem was that great but who am I to judge, seriously. Maybe if I was a crazy evil girl (this seems to be a bit of a lowkey crazy girl anthem) I would get it. It is never revealed or even really implied why they broke up but you get a strong sense it was literally all her fault which was kind of refreshing but also a little scary because she’s so nonchalant about it…

[Julie Jacuzzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeg er SOLGT og vil bare læse mer mer mer
1 Fordi bogen er smuk, titlen er smuk. Titlen er det samme navn som en fransk brie. Og i bogen lugter hendes kusse af schweizisk ost ifølge hendes dude og ikke umodne æbler som hun selv troede.
2 Fordi den handler om samtidig at hade dem som man også elsker og begærer.
3 Fordi jeget er den cool type og opmærksom på jordens undergang på en måde hvor vi må fatte at jorden ikke bare kan erstattes og det er pinligt at vi overhovedet kan tænke sådan når jordens massefylde og magt alle dage vil være trumfen.

[Bradley Willow]

I wanna recommend this book to everyone who loved or hated bluets, its like the blog punk version of that sort of thought exercise (in nelson’s case, thinking abt blue whenever she thinks of the relationship, in reines’ case, thinking about gender)

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved so much about this. Read it in the hour that my husband went lollypopping. Such great writing - I need everything she's written .

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

extremely enjoyable, but falls into a certain category of New York aughts literature. I liked it quite a bit and finished reading it in about an hour, but it may not be for you

[nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

"But I guess
Fetishizing sentences
Is no fair. They're
Not you. They
Are in your
Vicinity." (34)

"The talent, real, even pure, even
Natural, had to ripen in
The artificial man." (86)

[noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writers should never be in relationships with each other man

[Aumaine Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyrical, literary critical ecstasy. I do think her work will be read in 100 years

[Cec Szad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorite collection of poetry. Love the ending and all the literary references throughout. RAW

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found by chance on a thrift store book shop. Slice of life of new york city alternative lit culture in the early 2000’s. Voyeuristic view of complicated feelings of love, longing, and circumstance.

[Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

no woman is at fault but I'm not really in the mood for crazy girl style writing right now. sorry. clearly a well written and influential book.

[Farren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A single long poem or a series of poems with no discernible boundaries, about a love affair. The book is coversational, but urgent, the words tumble over each other desperately so that suddenly you look up and you've read forty pages.

"Ariana" pines after and also kind of disdains and also kind of loathes and also kind of tenderly cares for her love object, "Jake", who has been writing emails to "Emma", a girl who is clever but simple, pretty, infinitely more manageable than the narrator, whom he calls a "pretentious gypsy jewess goth"

-- So a situation ripe for examining the poet's stormy relationship to lyric (and to the sentimental, the cloying, the cliche-- some parts of this book are, I think, center-justified?, the objectification of women by men and the objectification of men by women, the longing for lover as idea or object of attainment, the fixation with the body, the dynamic between the sensual and the scatalogical) and the shortcomings, always, of language, in which you[poet:] are mired and elevated at the same time, in some sort of broken-down contemporary courtly love story. Yes.

Notebook: a few hundred
Sentences in a tiny
Hand. It was a way to feel
Your presence by extra-
Ordinary, by subtle means. I wrote
About when you said to me
I feel like the girl, and I asked you
What you meant and you said
Attached. I wrote about
How we slapped each other
in the face, and your thumb
On my throat, your red
Mouth, and about
The flies that buzzed around us
That day we took our pants
off in the valley by the fallen
Tree. This is how it is in the
Wild, you said, and I went ha
ha, and you said, The
Flies smell our pheramones.
There was even a donkey
screaming, like Balthazar. You are
As dirty as I am, you said.