A Hunger

by Lucie Brock-Broido

"Brock-Broido's talismanic words open into a magical territory of 'Domestic Mysticism' . . . A violently skewed portrait of the female poet and her Muse, a hyped-up version of Stevens and his interior paramour, locked in a soliloquy 'in which being there together is enough' . . . Something in Brock-Broido likes stealth, toxicity, wildness, neon--'perfect mean lines' . . . The poems lead off the page."
--Helen Vendler, The New Yorker

"These poems are out of Stevens in the abundance, glitter, and seductiveness of their language, out of Browning in the authority of their inhabiting, and out of Plath in the ferocity and passion of their holding on--to feeling, to life, and to us . . . An astonishing first book."
--Cynthia Macdonald

"Brock-Broido's brilliant nervosity and taste for the fantastic impel her to explore the obscure corners of the psyche and the fringes of ordinary human experience . . . The poems in A Hunger are original, strange, often unsettling, and mostly beautiful."
--Stanley Kunitz

Genres: Poetry, The United States Of America

60 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Lucie Brock-Broido was the author of four collections of poetry. She has received many honors, including the Witter-Bynner prize of Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award, the Harvard-Danforth Award for Distinction in Teaching, the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and a Guggenheim fellowship. She was described as an Elliptical Poet by critic Stephen Burt.

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Painful rapture to all parts of the body.

[Chris Via]

Review forthcoming on Leaf by Leaf, along with other Lucie Brock-Broido works!

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love her wild words. The Master Letters is my favorite, but this one's a close second.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Voyeurism and tabloidism, through a crisp poetic lens

[emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I think / I was lonely for everyone in the world.”

[Cynthia Cruz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first introduction to LBB. When I first came across this, in 1998, it blew my mind. I had no idea one could integrate obsession the way LBB did. I was astounded by the beauty and the means by which she was able to categorize ideas and thought; collecting them really, like Walter Benjamin collecting books.

[Renee]

Liked: a little piece of everlasting life (11)
Birdie Africa (5, about child in John Africa cult)
Real Life poem References 36 things by Georges Polti (basic plots).
And so long I've had you fame. (54) "move like spiders - into nightgowns"

[Emy Warrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the first books of poetry I fell in love with. And, now, we're reading it for graduate poetry workshop. Yay!

[Luanne Castle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yum!

[Lauren G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

"On the road that is not his road
anymore I belong to whatever it is
which will happen to me."

"Stay up all night if you have to, to avoid bad dreaming. It can hurt & I need you."

"All winter long, I've tried not to write to you. There is something too final to it I should think."

"By day, I will be light again.
I will survive and outsurvive the hours.
I will have done wrong in my sleep.
I will have dreamed of fires warmer
Fires smaller, much more beautiful.
Far more hungry, worshiped, singed."

"I am a creature of the real world, even
though you think I seldom choose to live there
properly. I am an air-breathing sort:
always cold at the extremity, never content
with the heat that I have."

"No one will ever love you like you wanted to be loved."

"I am the kind of girl who calls from baths in old extravagant hotels."

"What I want is to sleep away an epoch,
wake up as a girl with another kind of heart."

"It was a sunset of a certain alchemy
of oranges with the blues of bruises healing."

"When it's time, I will look there
For your name."

[Jeff Lewonczyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved discovering a new (to me) voice in this book - a wonderful blend of arcane treasures and tabloid luridness. Surreal without being hermetic, a series of bold but carefully crafted images - Brock-Broido sculpts rich landscapes out of words. I was grateful to her end-notes that described some of the stories behind the poems, which gave me a context and transformed the pieces into elaborate boxes to be unlocked and sifted through. I'm sad to hear that she passed away recently, but looking forward to exploring her work further.

[Scott Pomfret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disquieting

Every line so rich as to fill the reader bloated yet asking for more. Evocative, endless, and such a plethora of voice I am hard pressed to pin the place of birth, the race, the variety of English of the poet, because she inhabits so many at once and they seem to doubt her as much as she regrets their creation. Delightful.

[Kassandra McKay · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Given my character, I will always be mercurial,
a little sentimental, star-shaped & terrestrial
divine by water, healed by air
luminescent, inconceivable, a prayer
a Jessica, I sing.”

Silent incantations, ornate feminine interiority, self dissolving into breath, and talismanic imagery. Word magic & ferocious hunger that satisfied my desire for doll logic and my unnamed nostalgia for locked diaries gifted by convent members.

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Especially some of the first twenty pages of poems. I thought her diction and hold on language were utterly enchanting and depicted absolute understanding of who she was as a voice. Startling that this was a first book.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this much better the first time I read it 30 years ago. I don't know if the problem is that it has aged poorly of that I've read other work like it in the interim so it doesn't seem as novel or fresh.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I have gone into the fire & lived
There. I told you in a letter
You touch it only once, you watch it
For awhile you enter the flame.
The blue part of the scald, the part
That mars the skin, remembering
It will not forgive, forever.
That’s a pretty thing.” — “Hitchcock Blue”

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Now you're gone too & that's one more
Of us who won't go ragging into old age.
Before you died, you confessed
In violence that you would have this piece
Of everlasting life any fool
Can see that you are gone for good.
I'm learning to be quiet
Like a good passenger."

[Lauren Samblanet · Rating 3 out of 5]

best read in bed in the mornings with a cup of coffee in hand.

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will never be as smart as the notes page of this book or any of the poems within it.

[Vivian Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved much of this book — language as sheer verve! — I just don’t think the persona poems aged well.

[Lidia Colavita · Rating 5 out of 5]

A true master. There is no poet that enchants me the way LBB does.
”I’ve got this mystic streak in me.”

[Peggy Heitmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book rather quickly. I may read again even though I sometimes read the poems 2 or 3 times. Brock-Broido is a master at bringing us unusual stories and certainly stretches my imagination and my vocabulary. I like her work very much. However, I really preferred reading Trouble in Mind more than A Hunger.

[hh · Rating 3 out of 5]

i liked but didn't love this collection. there was something about it that didn't totally click for me, although there were poems that i enjoyed & that i think captured something undefinable.

[Bette Noir · Rating 1 out of 5]

Kind of cloying, kind of precious.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I sometimes questioned the authenticity of the personas that the poet took on, but the language is beautiful and often the ideas are as well.

[Miranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to figure out exactly what she's talking about. The notes in the back make it extremely helpful. Interesting topics she writes about.