The Middle Room

by Jennifer Moxley

Cultural Writing. Memoir. Moxley's detailed and lushly-written memoir is set largely in San Diego and follows her life thus far from childhood to marriage. Consistently focused on poetry and poets, it dwells on the curious ways Americans now find their way into the literary life. "There was a secret force deep in my psyche which, like a Cold War double agent, worked in tandem with my insecurity, a sort of wicked interior spy that emerged at the most inopportune moments to make sport of all my fears and fill me with crippling self-doubt as regards my natural fitness to live the life of the mind"--from the text. Jennifer Moxley teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Maine. Her books of poetry include IMAGINATION VERSES, OFTEN CAPITAL, THE SENSE RECORD and THE LINE.

Genres: Poetry

633 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2007

About the author

Electronic Poetry Center Author page:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/moxley...

Reviews

[gabi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I count myself incredibly lucky to learn from Prof. Moxley... it is clear by her prose that she is someone who truly loves to write. This was a delight from start to finish. I seem to have read it at the perfect point in my life.

[Zoe Tuck]

"Since the initial phase of my apprenticeship to poetry, I’ve found it very useful to read poets’ memoirs and journals[1]. In them is a wealth of information not often given (or not given explicitly) in their poetry on questions like how to live a poet’s life? It can be helpful to have information about how others have lived it, both for scope: what is the limit of what’s possible? and for succor: I’m not the only one to have been immature or to have suffered misfortune. If the poetry is a map of geological features in their facticity: here are the islands of an archipelago given in their respective sizes and distances from each other, these para-poetic writings function like translucent overlays, indicating—if I continue my map conceit—meteorological information, or the movements of flora and fauna." Read the rest at my reading blog.

[atito · Rating 5 out of 5]

though i maintain some well-earned reservations towards the figure of a poet, i have, while reading this, felt a clarity not unlike that of a teenager who, upon tasting an ingredient they had hitherto remembered with juvenile distaste but now find to be delectable, realizes that life only now begins to unfold in front of them. thumbing through this now-beloved memoir immersed me so much in the slow development of moxley's motley crew i practically grew old by the end of it

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have seen deep beneath the facade of the woman who helped create my poetic self and what I found was so real I am not sure I am human enough in comparison. It is evident this work of prose was written by a poet. The language is visceral, intricate, and sometimes uncanny.

[Thomas Sears · Rating 5 out of 5]

A treasure.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strange book, really, constantly upending expectations, but never straying from a kind of journalistic truth. Hard to fit the messiness of life into such neat prose. This memoir/elegy reads like a very long, extraordinarily well written letter to a friend. A bit Proustian, except without the fiction part. Instead you get a very inside, almost gossipy, look at the life of a gifted poet. And, in the best part of the book, for this reader, inside the poetry circles of UCSD in the nineties. The oddest effect of this book was that it bravely stripped the author of her mystery. Not sure how I feel about that. Feels like kind of a relief actually.

[Steve]

http://www.shannacompton.com/2007/09/..., http://parsifal-press.blogspot.com/20...

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

a page-turner!!!

[Emily Wolahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oddly captivating.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Engagingly eccentric. Odd-flavored prose...