Because the Sun

by Sarah Burgoyne

Camus’s Meursault and Thelma and Louise meet up under the blazing sun. Vexed by the ‘unremarkable star’ that ‘presses’ Camus’s Meursault to commit murder, Because the Sun considers the blazing sun as a material symbol of ambient violence – violence absorbed like heat and fired at the nearest victim. Likewise, as a friendship between women confronts gendered aggression in Thelma and Louise , the sun becomes the repository of pain, the high noon that pushes us through desert after desert. Because the Sun ’s pastiche of voices embodies both stylistic and formal relentlessness by teasing out tonalities that blend and merge into each other, generating a blinding effect, like looking into the sun. “Breathless and death defying, the poems in Because the Sun are high-wire work. They sway above us in a blazing light of Burgoyne’s making. It is so rare that a book of poems is both a tuning fork for our minds as well as a balm for our bodies. But that is exactly what happens page after page in this blazing book.” —Michael Dickman, author of Days & Days “This beautiful work wraps Camus’s The Stranger in a poetics concerning erasure/+ hope. Out of the titular Sun’s burning punctum burst telling shards of what is erased by Camus’s remarkable construction of whiteness the dead ‘Arab,’ the female body’s interminable violations – but also its warming, even blinding capacity for consequential pleasures.” —Gail Scott, author of Heroine “Sarah Burgoyne begins with the sun and ends with flowers. In between is a complicated exploration of what it means to exist within a tradition that is Camus, Rimbaud, Blake. Taking her cue from Sara Ahmed, she notices how hard it is to challenge this tradition and yet that it matters to do it anyway.” —Juliana Spahr, author of That Winter the Wolf Came

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

Published May 18, 2021

Reviews

[Sarah High · Rating 4 out of 5]

ate this up in baltimores penn station and otw back to nyc.

i picked this up at AWP because it was an easy sell for me; expérimental poetry and it’s all about one of my favorite scenes in all of literature, when Meursault (in Camus’s The Stranger) shoots someone four times on a beach one day because of the sun. please read this.

[Gigi Tate · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is a fever dream.
but real like spring.
couldn’t tell you if this books is too smart for me or what but it is extremely broken in it’s poetry yet so thematic and rich with sunlight that is almost makes sense.

this book is like staring directly into the sun on a very hot day and that’s the best way to describe it

[James Hawes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Burgoyne’s poetry is constantly inventive and wonderfully surprising. Because the Sun is a marvellous collection that challenges the reader to shift perspective and let go of any preconceptions regarding what a poem can be. Exciting stuff,highly recommended.

[Daniel J. Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection from and excellent poet.

[Jerome Ramcharitar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, beguiling, bewildering.

Reading this collection was a wonderful challenge.

Because The Sun will make you question symbols, the senses, your surroundings, your sanity.

Great work, Sarah!

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Thelma & Louise section was pretty cool and I imagine might have been even cooler if I'd known anything about the movie at all.