Bibliograph

Odessa, poems, Patricia Kirkpatrick

Type

Label

Odessa, poems, Patricia Kirkpatrick

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Odessa

Medium

electronic resource

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Responsibility statement

Patricia Kirkpatrick

Series statement

Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry

Sub title

poems

Summary

This collection is "an astonishing achievement" that renders grief and illness in "supremely lyrical, brilliantly imagined . . . poetry of the highest order" (Connie Wanek). A grim prognosis, brain cancer, leaves the speaker in Kirkpatrick's Odessa fighting for her life. The tumor presses against her amygdalae, the "emotional core of the self," and central to the process of memory. In poems endowed with this emotional charge but void of sentimentality, Kirkpatrick sets out to recreate what was lost by fashioning a dreamlike reality. Odessa, "roof of the underworld," a refuge at once real and imagined, resembles simultaneously the Midwestern prairie and a mythical god-inhabited city. In image-packed lines bearing shades of Classical heroism, Kirkpatrick delivers a personal narrative of stunning dimension. Winner of the Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry Winner of the Minnesota Book Award

Target audience

adult

Classification