Then, Suddenly

by Lynn Emanuel

Finalist for ForeWord Magazine ’s 1999 Poetry Book of the Year

A reader and a writer don their respective roles and embark on the journey of a book. This is their story--ultimately a love story--darkly funny, mournful, testy. It is about a reader who at times presides over the page like a god, and at others follows the leash of the author's voice through the dark streets of the book like a dog, and it is about a writer of determined slipperiness.  As we read, we think that each of us is The Reader, the one who knows the Real Story. But the more we think we understand, the more the story moves away from us―all is not what it seems.

This eagerly awaited third volume by the poet whose work The New York Times described as "at once charmed and frightening" is a book of high-spirited subversiveness, a work of argument, seduction, and a relentless devotion to language. Then, Suddenly― bristles with the sound of the author's voice--insistent, vital, hilarious, and iconoclastic--tearing away at the confinement of the page and at the distance between the page and the reader. Emanuel's images are dazzling. She creates a performance that is fearsome and funny in its portrayal of the argument between the work of the text and the world of the body. The Gettsyburg Review has called her a writer of "exquisite craftsmanship" who can "strike from language . . . images chiseled clean as bas-relief." Then, Suddenly― is a book of spectacle and verve, part elegy, part vaudeville.

Genres: Poetry, Poetry Plays

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Reader, I have made our paths cross” is the quote that ends this complex book that continually blurs the line between audience and participant, writer and subject. This collection of poems, which constantly butt up against each other (i.e. “A Landscape in the Country” is followed by “Soliloquy of the Depressed Book,” a poem against landscape poems, 39-42), is highly enjoyable and playful. Each poem seems to be speaking as much to the other poems as it is to the reader, and there is a cumulative effect of these repeated details that pulls the book together, tenuously and with a thin string.
The poetic tricks Ms. Emmanuel invents are especially admirable. She categorizes generalities and transforms them into specifics. For example, in “Then, Suddenly,” she keeps “meeting the People-I-Know” (62), evoking in the reader a list of people they would put in this category without having to list the people she puts in this group. She expertly mimics the styles of Gertrude Stein and Walt Whitman, and her own word play is genius. In “The Book’s Speech,” images such as a “stout cloud” and an elbow that “left a cleft” (8) in the moon, exemplify her expertise at not only imagining fresh images, but paying close attention to the musicality of the words she uses to convey those images. It is a rare feat for a collection of poems to work so well individually, as well as add such layers of meaning as these poems do as a whole.

[Maggie Glover · Rating 4 out of 5]

I fell in love with Emmanuel's work in college after reading "The Politics of Narrative" in The Dig and Hotel Fiesta, and was excited to return to her poetry with Then, Suddenly. She has a way of poking the reader directly in the nose-- she energizes and evolves the "you" in a way that few poets can do so effectively--by the end of several poems, it is clear that Emmanuel is talking directly to me. In this book in particular, she plays with the concept of audience, speaker and the notion of poetry in general. I was happy to see "The Politics of Narrative" included in this book; it still rings true to me, even in my jaded MFA state-of-mind. :)

[Biscuits · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is super solid all the way through, even while playing with form and self-consciousness.

There were a couple of parts that were a little sobby for me. Like boo-hoo moments. Other times, those kind of emotions came across with a punch. Give me the latter, please.

Oddly enough, I didn't mark a lot of favorite poems. I think they were all pretty solid, so it just read well as a collection. That is good.

A few favorites:
Out of Metropolis (good opening poem)
The Corpses
Persona (Great idea)
She (cool sideways layout)

Is it wrong for me to question purpose when a poet name drops the big names (Whitman, Stein, etc.)?

[Hila · Rating 4 out of 5]

See poem about Gertrude Stein as a typewriter in a dress.

[Alicia Mooney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started rereading this book. I love what she's doing!

[Frederick Gault · Rating 4 out of 5]

Touching elegant poetry about the losss of her father.

[Tallon Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lynn Emanuel, Wonderful as always. "She" and "Gertrude Stein" are stunning highlights here. 7/10

[Danna]

If nothing else, check out Emanuel's poems, "inside gertrude stein" and "Homage to Sharon Stone": the first explores being taken over by that "typewriter in a dress" so that Stein's genius can channel through the lesser being of Lynn Emanuel (Alice is featured as a kite figure); the second watches Sharon Stone from a distance, describes her hair, her entourage, and curiously, her erection, (the hell?, well, you'll just have to read the poem), and then Gertrude Stein makes a brief appearance. A fabulous collection!

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bundle of contradictions

Lynn Emanuel is playful and dark, meta-textual and accessible, funny and elegiac. I fell for this collection almost twenty years ago when I was in a creative writing program, and it feels fresher on this revisit than it did back then.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some wonderful poems. I would have given it a higher rating except I'm not particularly into meta-poetry...

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

not with a bang but a postmodern pfffft