On Ghosts

by Elizabeth Robinson

Poetry. "This book is continuing a tradition of Neo-Spiritualist literature in America where the poem is the means of divination. The poem is a map of a world where ghosts and unattributed thinkers and writers haunt and intrude and give signals to the world next to us. This is an occupation for all poets, the most secular to the most conceptual and the most experiential and spontaneous. If words appear in prose here in these pages, they are still the production of a New Spiritualist poet who feels the presences and wants to tell us about them."--Fanny Howe"Elizabeth Robinson's ON GHOSTS returns us to the haunted aura around words. Here, a crossing of genres--poetry, prose meditation, personal testimony--shows that language itself amounts to a gathering of ghosts. Robinson's oblique lyricism beckons us toward a twilight zone where we become 'witness to the unverifiable.' This is writing as the highest form of bewitching."--Andrew Joron

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Ghosts

64 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 2013

About the author

Elizabeth Robinson was educated at Bard College, Brown University, and Pacific School of Religion. She currently lives in Boulder, Colorado. With Colleen Lookingbill, she co-edits EtherDome Press. She co-edits Instance Press with Laura Sims and Beth Anderson.

Reviews

[T'Jae Freeman]

haven’t read much or any poetry at all for leisure so i feel as though no rating is best for now. i feel like i sort of need to read through it again to really grasp what the author means in the more ambiguous lines/stories. but overall i would say the stories felt right on the brink of something but ultimately i didn’t find what that thing was.

[Annie Tate Cockrum · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gorgeous and poetic little book about ghosts. The form is sort of giving Sheila Heti (positive).

[KT]

I think I like this but I’m also gonna let my book club who is smarter than I am explain this to me and then I’ll come back and review 🙏🏻

[Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love this book of poetry by Elizabeth Robinson. I loved it starting with two quotes near the beginning of the book: "I am the ghost of answering questions. Beware me. Keep me at a distance as I keep you at a distance." by Jack Spicer, and "Ideas come and settle in my mind by mistake, then, realizing their mistake, they absolutely insist on coming out." by Simone Weil.

I also love it because the poems in it, most of them prose poems, are original, creative, brief like the entire book, and leave the reader feeling as if he's been given an incompletely assembled tool or project that he is then required to complete himself. This kind of poetic prompting is priceless for readers and writers; a rich pool of ideas, and a source of new energy. Is it about ghosts? Probably, but also much more. There are several poems in here entitled "Photograph" and numbered one through eight, but there are no photographs except the ones in the reader's head, created by reading this book. If every book gifted as much to the reader in 57 pages as this one does, our libraries would be much more valuable than the priceless treasures they already are.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

good book. strong craft. just a tad bit on the boring side.

my microreview for The Boston Review:
http://www.bostonreview.net/poetry/mi...

[Ellie G · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Perhaps the most unearthly of experiences is to feel so thoroughly at ease, so full with trust that, for once, the body is not a boundary that hems one in."

A strange, unsettling, meditative experience. I'm not sure this was as much my cup of tea as I'd hoped, but it still appealed to my curiosity.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Robinson has so many great examples of project books, or book-length concepts. This one is one of her finest.

[Molly]

The apparition is not the entity that haunts. What it is, instead, is more like meatphysical sandpaper. It debrides, taking away all the dead tissue, and some of the living tissue. “Ghost,” with its connotation of white mist or film, is misleading. Think witch hazel or another astringent agent. Think of a scent whose sharpness makes you sneeze.

Over and over the loop of his life rubs on its seam until the stitches rough up his skin and the garment comes apart.