Guernica Editions
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Startled Night
Guernica Editions, Fall 2011
70 pages
Trade Paperback
ISBN13: 9781550713480
ISBN10: 1550713485
English
$12.00 Canada, $12.00 US
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Part distilled observation, part imaginative act, part spiritual expedition, the lyrically-idiosyncratic poems in Startled Night plumb the struggle of integrating the shadow, of coming into personhood and love--through the life processes of encounter and crisis, also through the chiaroscuro of art, image, and word. The decisive moment is perpetual, which is why the story cannot be finite.
Wolff's lyrics showcase a world of constant, ironic, and dreadful surprise. Her sensibility is attuned to reversals, and she chooses sharply cut images to communicate her plain-toned shock at the unexpected inconsistencies and awry events... Every incident is potentially stunning, in either an aggressive (negative) or passive (positive) fashion. Wolff's world possesses this precise doubleness... Wolff's work recalls that of U.S. poet Marianne Moore. There are the same plotted indents and line-lengths, the same detonating denotations.
George Elliot Clarke
Though Wolff's poems are full of striking imagery, it's their metaphoric reach that most impresses. Happiness and grief, love and conflict are subtly reflected through the prism of the natural world... Her vision is sharp indeed.
Barbara Carey
Elana Wolff's poems remind me of the poems of Jane Kenyon... in their conciseness, also in the translucent way they portray love, even in its darkest context.
Mary Lowenthal Felstiner
Awards
- ReLit Awards (longlisted)
Links
- Vallum Poem of the Week: "Waterwheel" by Elana Wolff
- Elana Wolff presented by Majlinda Bashllari
- Elana Wolff discusses Startled Night with Open Book Toronto
- Elana Wolff reads from Startled Night on Vallum online
- Elana Wolff interviewed in The Toronto Quarterly
- Startled Night reviewed by John B. Lee
- Started Night reviewed by Keith Garebian on Stage and Page
- Elana Wolff on Unloading the Soul
Books by Elana Wolff
