Anamnesis

by Lucy Ives

The word 'anamnesis' relates to how a person arrives at knowledge. In the Platonic sense, it suggests the recollection of ideas which the soul knew in a previous life. In a clinical sense, it is the full medical history as told by a patient; in the Christian sense, it is a Eucharistic prayer; and in immunology, it is a strong immune response. All of these meanings relate to the central concept of this fine collection, how a writer 'finds' and/or 'makes' meaning and deals with the temporary nature of the act, how even our most vital life stories are provisional at best, and how erasure becomes part of the process itself. We are asked to reflect on what previous life brought these sentences to the page, what history of illness or wellness caused the words to form this way, what invisible prayer was erased even before meaning was posited --Maxine Chernoff, from the Introduction.

Genres: Poetry

83 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2009

About the author

Lucy Ives is the author of several books of poetry and short prose, including The Hermit and the novella nineties. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Lapham’s Quarterly, and at newyorker.com. For five years she was an editor with the online magazine Triple Canopy. A graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University. She teaches at the Pratt Institute and is currently editing a collection of writings by the artist Madeline Gins.

Reviews

[Dawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Underwhelmed after being initially pretty impressed at the Amherst Bookstore when purchasing. Not sure it got the places it wanted to go with the write/cross-out device.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great premise and solid writing, but a bit repetitive. I know that the repetition was essentially the point of the poem, but a little more than halfway through I was getting tired of it. I wanted to see a bit more change to the formula. The end was very strong, but it came a little too late to really power the book into a five-star rating.

[Cynthia Arrieu-King · Rating 5 out of 5]

So visual and intelligent. I loved the refrain of the book creating such a well articulated and shifting thought process and then moving towards a very off-the-hook noisy kind of discursive effect.

[Colorado Review]

Reviewed for Colorado Review by Joe Betz