Book Left Open in the Rain by Barry Schwabsky
“Schwabsky’s adept and thoughtful lyrics twin the vagaries of love with the complexities of art, treating both as part of the same tangled interplay of surface, perspective, “self-portrayal,” and the erotically charged balance of power between observer and observed: “Notice the way I notice you.” The “you” that moves through the poems never quite resolves into an object, but gives occasion for the poet’s “crossing over into myself/in breath stained with images”: stars to blank pages, skies to “a child’s tooth.” If “the object of any and every couple/becomes mere music,” Schwabsky’s poems lend it a plausible clef.” -Goodreads
“Schwabsky’s adept and thoughtful lyrics twin the vagaries of love with the complexities of art, treating both as part of the same tangled interplay of surface, perspective, “self-portrayal,” and the erotically charged balance of power between observer and observed: “Notice the way I notice you.” The “you” that moves through the poems never quite resolves into an object, but gives occasion for the poet’s “crossing over into myself/in breath stained with images”: stars to blank pages, skies to “a child’s tooth.” If “the object of any and every couple/becomes mere music,” Schwabsky’s poems lend it a plausible clef.” -Goodreads
“Schwabsky’s adept and thoughtful lyrics twin the vagaries of love with the complexities of art, treating both as part of the same tangled interplay of surface, perspective, “self-portrayal,” and the erotically charged balance of power between observer and observed: “Notice the way I notice you.” The “you” that moves through the poems never quite resolves into an object, but gives occasion for the poet’s “crossing over into myself/in breath stained with images”: stars to blank pages, skies to “a child’s tooth.” If “the object of any and every couple/becomes mere music,” Schwabsky’s poems lend it a plausible clef.” -Goodreads
About the Author
Barry Schwabsky is an American poet and the art critic for The Nation. His recent books include Trembling Hand Equilibrium (Black Square Editions, 2015), The Perpetual Guest: Art in the Unfinished Present (Verso, 2017), Heretics of Language (Black Square Editions, 2018), and Landscape Painting Now (DAP, 2019). He lives in New York.