They and We Will Get into Trouble for This

by Anna Moschovakis

Anna Moschovakis measures words, crosses languages, and invents forms. In a mode of inquiry, friction, and barbed naiveté, these four long poems trouble notions of history, self-knowledge, and intimacy, insisting that "how to be" is a question we can never tire of confronting. From "Paradise (film two)" : / Being raised in science / under the sign of logic / I never understood how certain / promises / could be made / I could say "I promise / that unless something unexpected happens / I will do the dishes every night / this week" / I was very literal / especially with my lovers / I could say "I love you today" / but not "I will love you tomorrow" /

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2016

About the author

Anna Moschovakis is a translator and editor, and the author of several books of poetry, including I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone (2006) and You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake (2011), which won the James Laughlin Award. She is the recipient of awards and grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Fund for Poetry, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and has completed an apexart residency in Ethiopia. Moschovakis lives in Brooklyn and Delaware County, New York.

Reviews

[Jeremy Allan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a signal work in an important and growing collection of books from Anna Moschovakis. My full review is forthcoming from the Kenyon Review Online.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blammo. From the form, to the chosen breaks (inner line, line, and page), to the purposeful visual interuptions (via brackets, lines, and the running footer), I was displaced and drawn into Anna Moschovakis's incredibly intelligent, fractured, painted, philosophical, stream of consciousness, prose-essay-verse-listed world. Cue up the Kierkegaard & Lucy Lippard, as this work is not shy on going strong with cultural allusions that are layered with possibility for creating sense and meaning. I was sometimes unsure of my own reading and understanding, but I was thrilled to be on the ride of trying to make sense of this fabulous writing. I'm in awe, and I am also sad. The work is gripping, compelling, and leaves me feeling worried and fragmented (in the good way?). Will revisit this one again and again, for sure.

[Taylor Napolsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are mysterious and feel alive. It's as if they come from some moody part of the unconscious, wavering suspiciously on the page. Each series is both visual and dialectic, so that as I read it it was as though I were inside an installation of Moschovakis's creation.

[atito · Rating 5 out of 5]

good books today

[Jenna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this collection was like attempting to read an abstract painting.
The second section had ideas which I liked, and it was written like a question-answer personality test, both enjoyable. But the first section was like reading depression as a noun and the final section flew over my head and was lost in a place I don't want to explore.