Satin Cash: Poems

by Lisa Russ Spaar

Her poetry] is the perfect marriage of the realism of William Carlos Williams and the sleepless heaven-seeking... of Dickinson and Hopkins.--Virginia Quarterly Review In the wake of Blue Venus, called a virtuoso book by the Los Angeles Times Book Review, comes this ravishing volume of bodily, even carnal prayers, that quiver with the ecstasy and anguish of longing. Lisa Russ Spaar has long produced poems that emit a palpable, devotional Eros, but Satin Cash is a raw, more elemental invocation of human yearning--a startling song of worship and fetish.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published July 2, 2008

About the author

Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of many collections of poetry, including Glass Town (Red Hen Press, 1999), Blue Venus (Persea, 2004), Satin Cash (Persea, 2008), Vanitas, Rough (Persea, 2012), and Orexia (Persea, 2017). She is the editor of Monticello in Mind: Fifty Contemporary Poems on Jefferson, Acquainted with the Night: Insomnia Poems, and All that Mighty Heart: London Poems. A collection of her essays, The Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotations of Contemporary Poetry, was published by Drunken Boat Media in 2013. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Award, the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, an All University Teaching Award, an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the Library of Virginia Award for Poetry, and the 2013-2014 Faculty Award of the Jefferson Scholars Foundation. Her poems have appeared in the Best American Poetry series, Poetry, Boston Review, Blackbird, IMAGE, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Slate, Shenandoah, The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other journals and quarterlies, and her commentaries and columns about poetry appear regularly or are forthcoming in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She was short-listed for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for Excellence in Reviewing, and has taught at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Seattle Pacific University, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. --Poetry Foundation

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earth and heaven are equally present in these poems, addressed with equal degrees of longing. The natural/physical world informs the spiritual for Spaar--in "Pond," a bird's chirps are "quick sounds for the spirit's work," which goes a long way toward a summary of the entire volume. Spaar's tone is Victorian in that there is great passion in her voice, but the subject is approached obliquely. A bit of advice: keep a dictionary handy when you read this book. Her vocabulary will put a lexicographer to shame.

[Ann Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astonishingly good poetry, vivid and with great depth of emotion. Spaar's observations and use of language are remarkable.

[Jill Chan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally got to read this book and it's one of the best collections of poetry I've read so far. So much originality and verve...

Highly recommended...

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four because its great. Four because its not 100% what moves me. Cool language.

[Alejandra Vansant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sensuous and smart with intimate considerations of longing, all in the delicate hue of winter. Lisa can make an entire universe apparent in a poem, in two stanzas alone using such words as: subtractions, canted, egoless, rappelling, Beloved. I carried this book around for weeks after I finished it and read through again and again.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of an interesting read-- Spaar-- and again I can only go on the evidence of this book-- writes a kind of Dickinsonian line, with lots of category words, or those that refer to abstract or deep concepts, the kinds of things earlier writers would've capitalized. I think Spaar's verse suffers in comparison to Dickinson, though I think that's hardly a surprise... The capitalization thing is maybe significant because I think there's a strong core of belief in Dickinson, to sort of back up her abstractions, but Spaar has a harder time making that case, in our later more disbelieving age. I think there's then a creeping doubt, a suspicion that conviction maybe isn't enough, in these poems. That said, there are really good poems here, and if you like your lines clotted, you've got that here-- these are bumpy, rhythmic poems, and some of them are, gasp, pretty sexy.

[Rtm Taylor-Manning · Rating 3 out of 5]

delicate, sensual. some profound phrases. darkly erotic at times. a bit too much bird imagery for my taste.

[Julie N · Rating 3 out of 5]

For now it's only getting three stars. I loved the words, but I feel like I'm going to need to read it several more times before I fully grasp what the poet is saying.