Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities
"[Shattered Sonnets] breathes life into American verse . . . [an] urgent and unrepentant collection."—Rick Moody, Poetry
"This convulsive book [Shattered Sonnets]—at times funny, at times sick at heart—refracts and defends a wondrous light."—Edward Hirsch
Olena Kalytiak Davis's Shattered Sonnets has earned "cult classic" status and is an unremittingly electrifying collection brimming with intelligence, humor, and ardor. Drawing on an impressive array of forebears including Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and Sylvia Plath, Davis overhauls the sonnet and revitalizes the confessional style in poems that leave no convention unquestioned, no expectation unthwarted, no letter, spelling, or line break unconsidered.
From "sweet reader, flannelled and tulled":
You are cold. You are sick. You are silly.
Forgive me, kind Reader, forgive me, I had not intended to step this quickly this far
back. Reader, we had a quiet wedding: he&I, theparson
&theclerk. Would I could, stead-fast, gracilefacile Reader! Last,
good Reader, tarry with me, jessa-mine Reader. Dar-
(jee)ling, bide! Bide, Reader, tired, and stay, stay, stray Reader,
true. R.: I had been secretly hoping this would turn into a love
poem. Disconsolate. Illiterate. Reader,
I have cleared this space for you, for you, for you.
Olena Kalyiak Davis is the author of three books of poetry and currently works as a lawyer in Anchorage, Alaska.
Olena Kalyiak Davis is a first-generation Ukrainian-American who was born and raised in Detroit. Educated at Wayne State University, the University of Michigan Law School, and Vermont College, she is the author of three books of poetry, including And Her Soul Out of Nothing (University of Wisconsin Press 1997), which received the Brittingham Prize for Poetry. Davis’s honors include a Pushcart Prize and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. She currently works as a lawyer in Anchorage, Alaska.
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