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Boat
Boat | Lisa Robertson
5 posts | 1 read
From the author of The Baudelaire Fractal, a poetry classic, with new work In 2004, boldly original poet Lisa Robertson published a chapbook, Rousseau's Boat, poems culled from years of notebooks that are, nevertheless, by no means autobiographical. In 2010, she expanded the work into a full-length book, R's Boat. During the pandemic, she was drawn back into decades of journals to shape Boat. These poems bring fresh vehemence to Robertson's ongoing examination of the changing shape of feminism, the male-dominated philosophical tradition, the daily forms of discourse, and the possibilities of language itself. "Robertson has quietly but surely emerged as one of our most exciting and prolific philosophers--I mean poets. Interested in architecture, weather systems, fashion, autobiography, gender, the classics, and just about everything else, she manages to irradiate her subjects with calm, wit, and astonishing beauty. Robertson's style is both on splendid display and under fierce interrogation in her latest book, R's Boat." --Kenyon Review "In R's Boat, Robertson has penned a post-conceptual, post-lyric, relentlessly self-examining performance of memory and sincerity that manages, remarkably, to be both theoretically concerned and deeply emotive." --Harvard Review "R's Boat grapples with form, the constraint of language and tradition, and the challenge to avoid anything that might exist as template. The poems examine feminism, discourse, the body, and poetry itself through sumptuous, seductive language." --American Poets
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review
Taylor
Boat | Lisa Robertson
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Incredibly dense yet light simultaneously. I love the line breaks, the many different structures—which helps keep a pretty long book of poetry full of excitement—the questions and proclamations. I found it playful, dead serious, faintly spiritual. I read it twice and could read it a third time, easy. It‘s filled with guesswork and ambiguity so it could really never get old. I also love the tactile feel of this paperback—it‘s lovingly crafted.

quote
Taylor
Boat | Lisa Robertson

I wanted narrative to be a picture of distances ringed
in purple.

Then I wanted it to be electronic fields exempt from
sentiment.

Then I wanted it to be the patient elaboration of my
senses.

Both are mixtures of enigma and proof.

quote
Taylor
Boat | Lisa Robertson

Honeysuckle, elder, moss, followed one another like a
sequence of phrases in a sentence, contributing
successively to an ambience that for the sake of
convenience I will call the present.

blurb
Taylor
Boat | Lisa Robertson

I finished this actually, but I‘m hesitant to leave a real review, as I plan to reread it, and ever since finishing it I‘ve been watching videos of Lisa Robertson giving talks and such.

It doesn‘t help that much of my reading lately has been magazines, which gives me nothing to contribute to this app…. (They‘ve been good mags though! (Autocorrect tried to change that to MAGA!).)

But for now I will say that this book “Boat” is phenomenal.

quote
Taylor
Boat | Lisa Robertson

Loved and l ost at once
togethe r when
to love is t o have lost
and to be lo st is to love
love‘s lost e ver limned
elemental love elemental loss
have to be together
at once limi nal and ever