The Lamplit Answer

by Gjertrud Schnackenberg

The award-winning poet's second poetry collection includes several works of light verse and a free verse poem about Chopin's first year in Paris, but is dominated by rhymed and cadenced poems concerning significant historical lives and events

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Sebastian]

First read: November 14, 2024, Thursday

[Carla Seravalli · Rating 5 out of 5]

New Formalist queen. Definitely check her out if you like Dryden, Donne or Milton. And if you do, buckle up

[Jenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I guess I was disappointed by the book's unremitting lugubriousness, the melancholic self-absorption bordering on self-pity that enfolds the poet's voice like a smothering cellophane wrap. "Alack, I am lonely" and "Alas, my beloved has deserted me" are fine and good sentiments, but one expects more scope and depth than this from a poet of Schnackenberg's caliber.

Some of the poems herein have intriguing set-ups but ultimately left me feeling let down. "Imaginary Prisons," a partial re-imagining of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, is an exhaustingly static-feeling poem that doesn't bring much new insight to the well-trodden mythic territory it stakes out. "The Heavenly Feast," an ode to saintly 20th-century philosopher Simone Weil, is well-wrought but ultimately does not do justice to Weil, whose shortest writings contain more searing emotion than this long poem Schnackenberg has written in her honor. "Sonata" is an interesting exercise in form, but feels overly drawn-out and repetitive, given its slender and frustratingly abstract subject matter.

On the other hand, two poems in this collection, "Two Tales of Clumsy" and "Supernatural Love," are strikingly good and memorable, effectively yoking together substance and form so as to climb mountain-peaks of emotional intensity where the air is so rarefied and bracingly cold, one's breath is quite taken away.

[Richard Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schnackenberg shows incredible skill in using proper forms in her poetry that is a bit out of style nowadays, including astounding uses of internal rhyme. Her etymology is beyond belief. This all sounds very stuffy, but her poems are eminently readable and very moving. Supernatural love is absolute perfection!

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best contemporary American poets; one of my favorite books. The title poem is often anthologized, and for good reason.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm enchanted by the musicality of Schnackenberg's poetry. "Sonata" lives, incomprehensibly transposing, in me as a deeply felt thought.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 S357 1985

[Bridget Hodder · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems...you'll ask yourself how you didn't know about them before. You'll wonder how you lived without them.

This book...it's one of my most treasured possessions.