And, for Example

by Ann Lauterbach

In And For Example, her fifth volume of poetry, Ann Lauterbach considers the ways in which language constitutes a shifting landscape of examples by which we come to know ourselves and the world. What we choose to name is as significant as what we choose to ignore or forget, and these choices, whether in the personal articulations of love and grief, or in the public domain of politics and commerce, inform our actions on the temporal stage.
One choice determines the next, as notes in music or strokes in abstract painting, and the poem is built from a series of such gestures, each of which is complete in itself. "Our Lady of Provocation... whose meanings we can piece together/ from her journals that were torn into bandages/ to wrap the wounds of the dying."
In Part One, "The Untelling," Lauterbach explores the instability of facts. In the long central poem, "For Example," she elaborates the links between the perceived and the real in our determination of what is true. In this poem's final two sections, she invokes a fire (inspired by her witnessing the Oakland fires of 1992) as an image of the transformational force from which new ways of seeing and making might occur.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Born and raised in New York City, Ann Lauterbach studied at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Columbia University. Before completing her M.A. in English. she moved to London to work in publishing and art galleries. Upon her return to New York, she continued working in art galleries for a number of years. Lauterbach then began teaching writing and literature.

She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York State Foundation for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and in 1995, she was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Lauterbach has taught at Brooklyn College, Columbia, Iowa, Princeton, and at the City College of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is currently Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College, where she has also been, since 1991, co-chair of writing in the Milton Avery School of the Arts. She is also a visiting core critic at the Yale Graduate School of the Arts.

Reviews

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

As language poets go, Ann Lauterbach is one of the better ones, but language poetry is not really my jam. I did like the occasional line or passage, though, so I'm gonna keep the book. Maybe if I read it again in a few years I'll like it better.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

as a language poet, ann lauterbach (and particularly this work) both informed and served as a precedent for my own poetic voice (in my senior thesis).

[Camille Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ann Lauterbach’s Pilgrim of Desire

[Sierra · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 ish