That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness by Elisa Gabbert

by Elisa Gabbert

This collaboration between Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney is “Just more entertaining than poems are supposed to be. And I'm not using the word "entertaining" as some kind of sly putdown either. These poems have more human interaction going on in a couple of lines than many writers manage in a couple of books. The linguistic energy and, really, virtuosity, can be stunning. These are poems that know what people are like when they're around people.” —Mark Wallace

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Elisa Gabbert writes the On Poetry column for the New York Times and is the author of six collections of poetry, essays, and criticism, including Normal Distance; The Unreality of Memory & Other Essays; The Word Pretty; L'Heure Bleue, or the Judy Poems; The Self Unstable; and The French Exit.

Reviews

[Geoff Wyss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Smart, funny, subtle, highly inventive, and highly recommended. If you parked a brain at the midpoint between TV ad language, contemporary poetry, social mediaspeak, hip-hop, and workplace cant--and then downloaded its contents--you'd get something like this book. Voluptuousness seems to be a meditation on contemporary language, its trash and beauty and rhythms.

[Rusty · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are fine poets singly, and together they're a knockout. I so so admire truly witty, playful poems, and it's very cool to have all this work in one place so I don't have to scour the 'net for it. Great stuff.

[Brian Foley · Rating 3 out of 5]

These poems are so charismatic, its hard to believe they come from two separate voices. Conspiracy? Maybe.