Soft Targets
Author | : Deborah Landau |
Publisher | : Copper Canyon Press |
Total Pages | : 70 |
Release | : 2019-06-18 |
ISBN-10 | : 9781619321960 |
ISBN-13 | : 1619321963 |
Rating | : 4/5 (963 Downloads) |
Download or read book Soft Targets written by Deborah Landau and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starred Review in Publishers Weekly: "Through the cadence of these poems, which sometimes resemble lullabies in their dreaminess and gorgeous lyricism, Landau captures the ways humans persist, despite our collective anxiety, in our longing for 'something tender, something that might bloom.'” Deborah Landau’s fourth book of poetry, Soft Targets, draws a bullseye on humanity’s vulnerable flesh and corrupted world. In this ambitious lyric sequence, the speaker’s fear of annihilation expands beyond the self to an imperiled planet on which all inhabitants are “soft targets.” Her melancholic examinations recall life’s uncanny ability to transform ordinary places—subways, cafes, street corners—into sites of intense significance that weigh heavily on the modern mind. “O you who want to slaughter us, we’ll be dead soon/enough what’s the rush,” Landau writes, contemplating a world beset by political tumult, random violence, terror attacks, and climate change. Still there are the ordinary and abundant pleasures of day-to-day living, though the tender exchanges of friendship and love play out against a backdrop of 21st century threats with historical echoes, as neo-Nazis marching in the United States recall her grandmother’s flight from Nazi Germany.