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Arena
Praise for Arena:
Thoughtfully, painfully, bitterly, lovingly, the poems in Lauren Shapiro’s Arena expose how the limits of the unreal become real when one is forced to interrogate a family member’s attempted suicide. But what is interrogated and assimilated and articulated is not just death, mourning, loss, and absence. Rather, in Shapiro’s Arena, there is a crowd witnessing and absorbing an artwork where atrocity, bureaucracy, history, and spectacle merge to form a performance that we are unable to look away from. Shapiro refuses to soften the most powerful blows that prevent us from filtering out the unspeakable as we struggle to live a quotidian life when all that we know explodes. This is a poignant and stunning achievement. —DANIEL BORZUTZKY
Keen-witted, caustic, and resolutely dry-eyed, these poems register a collective alarm in which private grief and global dread converge “at the pace of adrenaline.” —SUZANNE BUFFAM
Is it possible to observe the suffering of others without turning their suffering into spectacle? In Arena, Lauren Shapiro suggests that we can do so whenever we bring ourselves whole to each other, but none of us, Shapiro understands, is whole. And so, instead, we meet as strangers in an arena: “When the crowd quiets it’s to see / the decapitation or just to breathe in, not me.” With great art, and great skill, Shapiro sees through the distracting strangeness of the present moment to the truths about ourselves that the present moment reveals. —SHANE MCCRAE
Lauren Shapiro’s poems frack open the anxiety deep in our bedrock. Arena touches that place where we thought we were safe in our untouchedness. I really love and trust the person in these poems. And the poems themselves are so fluid, fast, dark, witty, and rueful. —DARCIE DENNIGAN
Arena insists we share one another’s pain not once, not twice, but over and over again, possibly never-endingly, it insists on memory’s graceful panic of “endless anticipation” while understanding how “destiny was the wound” is necessary. In blocks of deadpan prose and in pain-torn ragged lines, Shapiro never flinches from suffering; no one should read this book without being prepared to be dragged up and down and through the rage and suffering suicide delivers; “there are so many ways / to be angry” simmers underneath every word. —DARA WIER
Lauren Shapiro is the author of Easy Math (Sarabande, 2013), which was the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize and the Debut-litzer Prize for Poetry, as well as a chapbook of poems, Yo-Yo Logic (DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press, 2011). She is an associate professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.
Thoughtfully, painfully, bitterly, lovingly, the poems in Lauren Shapiro’s Arena expose how the limits of the unreal become real when one is forced to interrogate a family member’s attempted suicide. But what is interrogated and assimilated and articulated is not just death, mourning, loss, and absence. Rather, in Shapiro’s Arena, there is a crowd witnessing and absorbing an artwork where atrocity, bureaucracy, history, and spectacle merge to form a performance that we are unable to look away from. Shapiro refuses to soften the most powerful blows that prevent us from filtering out the unspeakable as we struggle to live a quotidian life when all that we know explodes. This is a poignant and stunning achievement. —DANIEL BORZUTZKY
Keen-witted, caustic, and resolutely dry-eyed, these poems register a collective alarm in which private grief and global dread converge “at the pace of adrenaline.” —SUZANNE BUFFAM
Is it possible to observe the suffering of others without turning their suffering into spectacle? In Arena, Lauren Shapiro suggests that we can do so whenever we bring ourselves whole to each other, but none of us, Shapiro understands, is whole. And so, instead, we meet as strangers in an arena: “When the crowd quiets it’s to see / the decapitation or just to breathe in, not me.” With great art, and great skill, Shapiro sees through the distracting strangeness of the present moment to the truths about ourselves that the present moment reveals. —SHANE MCCRAE
Lauren Shapiro’s poems frack open the anxiety deep in our bedrock. Arena touches that place where we thought we were safe in our untouchedness. I really love and trust the person in these poems. And the poems themselves are so fluid, fast, dark, witty, and rueful. —DARCIE DENNIGAN
Arena insists we share one another’s pain not once, not twice, but over and over again, possibly never-endingly, it insists on memory’s graceful panic of “endless anticipation” while understanding how “destiny was the wound” is necessary. In blocks of deadpan prose and in pain-torn ragged lines, Shapiro never flinches from suffering; no one should read this book without being prepared to be dragged up and down and through the rage and suffering suicide delivers; “there are so many ways / to be angry” simmers underneath every word. —DARA WIER
Lauren Shapiro is the author of Easy Math (Sarabande, 2013), which was the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize and the Debut-litzer Prize for Poetry, as well as a chapbook of poems, Yo-Yo Logic (DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press, 2011). She is an associate professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
Published October 13, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 11, 2023
The impact of family trauma is always complicated. And writing poems about family trauma is even more complicated. There is such a tradition for writing into grief, or bewilderment, or chaos. What I appreciate in Lauren Shapiro’s Arena is its negotiation between trauma and spectacle. The poems are both involved with whatever emotion she might attach to her father’s suicide attempts as well as the social positioning she has to arrange for herself. Arena is partially a personal testimony and partially an observed tragedy. And the poet existing between the two.
How is someone supposed to react when a father attempts suicide? And how can a book of poetry address complexity in a way that distinguishes itself from others in this space? Not necessarily books that speak to this specific situation. But books that feature a poet reckoning with family trauma, poems’ seemingly natural suitability for heavy emotional content, and a book as an extended meditation. Shapiro’s poems are personally conversant with sadness. And the poems accept their ability or inability to deliver the poet to a sense of closure. What I struggle with is role “Arena” poems take. They assuredly expand the book’s scope. I’m thinking especially about the poem “Spring,” where the poet’s searching gaze at the mother and son whose father committed suicide has both the eager search for commonality as well as the self-conscious awareness of others’ responses when they learn something like this. It’s just he book’s most involved poems are personal. And the “Arena” poems don’t have an equal gravity.
However, the “Arena” poems appearing at intervals in the book remind a reader there is both a subjective and objective way of reading about the poet’s life. They struggle with the factuality of the father’s life, the fact he was her parent, and a self-consciousness about what others might think this does mean or should mean for her. What is a daughter supposed to do about a father who does this to himself? How does the daughter feel herself observed by others? How is her life changed, whether people are actually observing her or not, given that she will forever have this fact in her life? In this respect, the book introduces an added complexity. And I’m especially interested in the poet as one of many in the arena, and the focus placed on a central event. For me, it introduces the concept of spectacle. Which is a surprising dimension to find in a book about tragedy.
How is someone supposed to react when a father attempts suicide? And how can a book of poetry address complexity in a way that distinguishes itself from others in this space? Not necessarily books that speak to this specific situation. But books that feature a poet reckoning with family trauma, poems’ seemingly natural suitability for heavy emotional content, and a book as an extended meditation. Shapiro’s poems are personally conversant with sadness. And the poems accept their ability or inability to deliver the poet to a sense of closure. What I struggle with is role “Arena” poems take. They assuredly expand the book’s scope. I’m thinking especially about the poem “Spring,” where the poet’s searching gaze at the mother and son whose father committed suicide has both the eager search for commonality as well as the self-conscious awareness of others’ responses when they learn something like this. It’s just he book’s most involved poems are personal. And the “Arena” poems don’t have an equal gravity.
However, the “Arena” poems appearing at intervals in the book remind a reader there is both a subjective and objective way of reading about the poet’s life. They struggle with the factuality of the father’s life, the fact he was her parent, and a self-consciousness about what others might think this does mean or should mean for her. What is a daughter supposed to do about a father who does this to himself? How does the daughter feel herself observed by others? How is her life changed, whether people are actually observing her or not, given that she will forever have this fact in her life? In this respect, the book introduces an added complexity. And I’m especially interested in the poet as one of many in the arena, and the focus placed on a central event. For me, it introduces the concept of spectacle. Which is a surprising dimension to find in a book about tragedy.
December 2, 2021
4.5 ⭐️
How do we, as humans, share in our suffering and grief?
This is the initial question that posed itself when reading this collection. The poetry is beautiful and unique. It’s cryptic and demanding of acknowledgment on a topic lots of people shy away from. Something I found particularly interesting was the connection to generational trauma and how we carry the trauma of our family members within us. I don’t know if this is something Shapiro aimed to explore in this collection, but that’s what spoke to me.
There’s this amazing quality of making the reader feel as though the poetry is speaking in a universal manner. When really, most of the poems are about specific experiences endured by the speaker. It connects the grief of the individual to the collective. This is an essential quality of poetry in my opinion.
Critique: i think one of the best parts of poetry is solving the puzzle that it is. Wanting to read a collection again, just to make sure that you understood exactly what it meant to you as an individual. I didn’t really find myself wanting to do that in this collection, which is why I knocked it a bit. It explores so much sorrow, and the phenomenon of sharing your grief for all to see, along with them. The audience and the speaker connect as one. I think with such a premise, the collection should’ve been more enthralling in its voice. The voice was a bit repetitive to me, which took away some of my praise. I also would’ve liked some points of pleasure in the collection, it’s just so sorrowful. Which is okay, but I would’ve liked to come away with a better concept of healing than what was given. I’m sure this book was healing for the speaker, but since it depicts an immersion in grief from the audience, I would’ve liked to have participated in some of those elements as well. Not sure if that makes sense or if what I’m saying is clear. However, it’s a wonderful collection that I think most people would benefit from reading.
Overall I have so much admiration for Shapiro and her work. It’s haunting and beautiful, nothing is every perfection, but Shapiro’s poetry will echo in my mind for awhile.
How do we, as humans, share in our suffering and grief?
This is the initial question that posed itself when reading this collection. The poetry is beautiful and unique. It’s cryptic and demanding of acknowledgment on a topic lots of people shy away from. Something I found particularly interesting was the connection to generational trauma and how we carry the trauma of our family members within us. I don’t know if this is something Shapiro aimed to explore in this collection, but that’s what spoke to me.
There’s this amazing quality of making the reader feel as though the poetry is speaking in a universal manner. When really, most of the poems are about specific experiences endured by the speaker. It connects the grief of the individual to the collective. This is an essential quality of poetry in my opinion.
Critique: i think one of the best parts of poetry is solving the puzzle that it is. Wanting to read a collection again, just to make sure that you understood exactly what it meant to you as an individual. I didn’t really find myself wanting to do that in this collection, which is why I knocked it a bit. It explores so much sorrow, and the phenomenon of sharing your grief for all to see, along with them. The audience and the speaker connect as one. I think with such a premise, the collection should’ve been more enthralling in its voice. The voice was a bit repetitive to me, which took away some of my praise. I also would’ve liked some points of pleasure in the collection, it’s just so sorrowful. Which is okay, but I would’ve liked to come away with a better concept of healing than what was given. I’m sure this book was healing for the speaker, but since it depicts an immersion in grief from the audience, I would’ve liked to have participated in some of those elements as well. Not sure if that makes sense or if what I’m saying is clear. However, it’s a wonderful collection that I think most people would benefit from reading.
Overall I have so much admiration for Shapiro and her work. It’s haunting and beautiful, nothing is every perfection, but Shapiro’s poetry will echo in my mind for awhile.
March 13, 2021
This was very dark, swimming in realms of self-harm, delusion, mass spectacle, and violence of domestic kinds. There is a droning quality to Shapiro’s poetic voice that begs re-reading at points, but there is definitely no pleasure here.
May 29, 2021
a great book well worth finding
beautiful meditations on loss and beauty that are memorable, funly rendered, completely enveloping, and critique the narratives they draw from, like all good lyrical thought
the poems made me want to read more of them
beautiful meditations on loss and beauty that are memorable, funly rendered, completely enveloping, and critique the narratives they draw from, like all good lyrical thought
the poems made me want to read more of them
January 27, 2021
Tough and sometimes cryptic look at suicide and its effect on those left behind.
December 13, 2023
Will read again for years to come.
July 6, 2026
Not very impactful.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews