Carcanet Press - Marabou

Description
Excerpt
Author
Contents
Awards
Reviews

When it came, we were getting ready
For bed. The gowns lay on the mattresses,
White as palms open for a coin.

I always loved how they spread themselves,
Armless & headless, across the sheets,
Loved that perfect stillness of things

Dropped from a great height. They stretched
The length of the beds like so many
Paper dolls. That night

The sandals waited on the floor, soft
Brown mouths, open & dumb as those
Of children. I loved how the feet

Came down with a slap, the straps
An embrace. We were kneeling
When it hit. Through the window

I saw its hand & when the others ran
I stood, walked the row
Putting on each pair of sandals, pulling

One crackling cloth over my head after another.

'Vesuvius (in the Priests' Quarters)'

Marabou, Jane Yeh's first book of poems, is a meditation on the nature of artifice, and on the self. Her snapshots freeze fraught instants in the lives of a broad cast of characters: the horror movie mummy, an Elizabethan shoemaker, a flock of Cumbrian sheep; there's Harry Potter's owl and Oscar Wilde, two European princesses... In these beautifully crafted poems, her personae address the themes of love, lust, glamour and desperation with wit and flair. Hers is the language of fashion, espionage, revenge tragedy; her taut pressure-packed lines combine vivid detail and bold confession and reach unexpected emotional truths.

Table of Contents

I

Correspondence

Double Wedding, 1615

The Pre-Raph�lites

Adultery

Convent at Haarlem

Cumbria

The Only Confirmed Cast Member Is Ook the Owl, Who Has Been Tapped To Play the Snowy White Owl Who Delivers Mail for Harry

II

Bad Quarto

Telegraphic

Monster

Paris, 1899

Teen Spies

Biological

Blue China

Love in a Cold Climate I

Love in a Cold Climate II

Divining

France, 1919

Substitution

Defence

Portrait at Windsor

Seaside Resorts

Parliament of Fowls

House

F�te Champ�tre

Vesuvius (In the Priests' Quarters)

III

Shoemaker's Holiday

Revenger's Tragedy

Rhode Island Waltz

Alchemy

Exercises

Self-Portrait After Vermeer

Notes

Jane Yeh was born in America and has lived in London since 2002. She holds degrees in English and Creative Writing from Harvard, Iowa, Manchester Metropolitan, and Royal Holloway London universities. Her first collection of poems, Marabou (Carcanet, 2005), was shortlisted for the Whitbread, Forward, and Aldeburgh poetry prizes. She was ... read more

Awards won by Jane Yeh Commended, 2019 Poetry Book Society Recommendation (Discipline) Short-listed, 2005 Whitbread Poetry Prize (Marabou) Short-listed, 2005 Forward Poetry Prize for the Best First Collection
(Marabou) Winner, 2012 Girton College Jane Martin Prize

'Marabou is fresh and surprising. If only all first books were this unusual.'
Stephen Knight, the Independent on Sunday Praise for Jane Yeh 'Density and nuance dancing together in precise flights of the imagination are the hallmarks of Yeh's poetry.'

John Yau, Hyperallergic Books of the Year 2020

'Yeh pulls back the lens of aestheticised perfection to show the world as it really stands. Each time we think we have a handle of Yeh's poems, and expectation of what they might do, she wrong-foots us; so we must begin again, and join her in interrogating patriarchal and elitist notions of what poetry is, what it can do, and what it should include.'

Jenna Clarke, The Compass

Yeh's use of irony and the surreal is always, at its best, counterbalanced with emotional weight. Like Chelsey Minnis, she uses the interplay of imagery to upset and interrogate cultural hierarchies. The virtuoso, often slapstick, performance of these poems doesn't belie the seriousness, or the razor-sharp vision, of this collection.

Kate Potts, Poetry London

Yeh is a poet of imaginative transformation who creates worlds that borrow from art, fashion, the internet, and pop culture [...] this is an impressive book that I hope will be influential and widely read. Continual surprises, when coupled with the compression of her best poems, are why Discipline reads so well. Yeh's mastery of this tension rewards rereading over and over. Like a child at the bottom of a slide, I found myself wanting to start again as soon as I'd finished.'

Matthew Valades, Quarterly West

  'Such poems capture the universality of loneliness, the daily negotiations we make with our given bodily 'identities', and our desire to connect with other living beings, imperfect as those connections may be'
Kathryn Maris, Times Literary Supplement
'Humour and linguistic dynamism, mainstream and counterculture, brush up against each other in Yeh's poetry'
Rob A. Mackenzie, Magma
  'Every word, image and space is arranged just so, and you can almost detect the hand of the poet making the final tweak'
Edwina Attlee, The Poetry Review, Summer 2019
'Across her collections, Yeh affords much time and empathy...in sketching these ostensibly comic figures with idiosyncrasies and surprising expressions of fears, desires or dreams they come far closer to the reader than their technicolour exteriors might suggest...What stands out most for me about Yeh's work is its generosity, or rather its un-self-centredness. It takes a serious openness of heart to be so willing to appear so ludicrous, to so consistently prioritise the playful and culturally communal, to keep, as she demands of the poets she critiques herself, the time, energy and experience of reader to the fore of one's aesthetics.'
Dave Coates, Dave Poems
  'Like the paintings of Kirsten Glass that inspire Discipline's title poem, Yeh shows that the elegant and the macabre are never far apart.'
Ben Wilkinson, The Guardian
  'Discipline' offers an array of dark humour and electric wit...Yeh exposes the vanity of our emotional weight. The result is liberating and, yes, deeply funny.'
Sandeep Parmar, PBS Spring Bulletin 2019
   '"Haunting and hilarious" explorations of identity and performance prompted by videos and paintings, animals and street life.'
The Guardian - '2019 in books: what you'll be reading this year'
'She is a brilliant technician. Her acute visual sensibility, the sensuousness of her descriptions, her gift for the creation of striking metaphors, her sensitive orchestration of sounds and the precision of her thought are all rich sources of pleasure for the reader.'
Edmund Prestwich, Acumen 'Jane Yeh's The Ninjas is as unsettling and funny as its cover image... One is tempted to gobble down the exquisite poems one after another...'
Sarah Coles, New Welsh Review 'The Ninjas is profound, funny and sad, reminding us that humans and androids are lonely and need love, and that attention to detail and kindness to animals can make a better world. This quirky and wise collection has outstanding originality and poise.'
Aingeal Clare, Guardian

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Marabou Jane Yeh 10% off eBook (EPUB) Categories: 21st Century, First Collections, Women Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE! (Pub. Jul 2012) 9781847776310 £7.95 £7.16 Paperback (64 pages) (Pub. Oct 2005) 9781857547887 Out of Stock To use the EPUB version, you will need to have Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) installed on your device. You can find out more at https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html. Please do not purchase this version if you do not have and are not prepared to install, Adobe Digital Editions. Description Excerpt Author Contents Awards Reviews When it came, we were getting ready For bed. The gowns lay on the mattresses, White as palms open for a coin. I always loved how they spread themselves, Armless & headless, across the sheets, Loved that perfect stillness of things Dropped from a great height. They stretched The length of the beds like so many Paper dolls. That night The sandals waited on the floor, soft Brown mouths, open & dumb as those Of children. I loved how the feet Came down with a slap, the straps An embrace. We were kneeling When it hit. Through the window I saw its hand & when the others ran I stood, walked the row Putting on each pair of sandals, pulling One crackling cloth over my head after another. 'Vesuvius (in the Priests' Quarters)' Marabou, Jane Yeh's first book of poems, is a meditation on the nature of artifice, and on the self. Her snapshots freeze fraught instants in the lives of a broad cast of characters: the horror movie mummy, an Elizabethan shoemaker, a flock of Cumbrian sheep; there's Harry Potter's owl and Oscar Wilde, two European princesses... In these beautifully crafted poems, her personae address the themes of love, lust, glamour and desperation with wit and flair. Hers is the language of fashion, espionage, revenge tragedy; her taut pressure-packed lines combine vivid detail and bold confession and reach unexpected emotional truths. Table of Contents I Correspondence Double Wedding, 1615 The Pre-Raph�lites Adultery Convent at Haarlem Cumbria The Only Confirmed Cast Member Is Ook the Owl, Who Has Been Tapped To Play the Snowy White Owl Who Delivers Mail for Harry II Bad Quarto Telegraphic Monster Paris, 1899 Teen Spies Biological Blue China Love in a Cold Climate I Love in a Cold Climate II Divining France, 1919 Substitution Defence Portrait at Windsor Seaside Resorts Parliament of Fowls House F�te Champ�tre Vesuvius (In the Priests' Quarters) III Shoemaker's Holiday Revenger's Tragedy Rhode Island Waltz Alchemy Exercises Self-Portrait After Vermeer Notes Jane Yeh was born in America and has lived in London since 2002. She holds degrees in English and Creative Writing from Harvard, Iowa, Manchester Metropolitan, and Royal Holloway London universities. Her first collection of poems, Marabou (Carcanet, 2005), was shortlisted for the Whitbread, Forward, and Aldeburgh poetry prizes. She was ... read more Awards won by Jane Yeh Commended, 2019 Poetry Book Society Recommendation (Discipline) Short-listed, 2005 Whitbread Poetry Prize (Marabou) Short-listed, 2005 Forward Poetry Prize for the Best First Collection (Marabou) Winner, 2012 Girton College Jane Martin Prize 'Marabou is fresh and surprising. If only all first books were this unusual.' Stephen Knight, the Independent on Sunday Praise for Jane Yeh 'Density and nuance dancing together in precise flights of the imagination are the hallmarks of Yeh's poetry.' *John Yau, Hyperallergic* Books of the Year 2020** 'Yeh pulls back the lens of aestheticised perfection to show the world as it really stands. Each time we think we have a handle of Yeh's poems, and expectation of what they might do, she wrong-foots us; so we must begin again, and join her in interrogating patriarchal and elitist notions of what poetry is, what it can do, and what it should include.' Jenna Clarke, The Compass Yeh's use of irony and the surreal is always, at its best, counterbalanced with emotional weight. Like Chelsey Minnis, she uses the interplay of imagery to upset and interrogate cultural hierarchies. The virtuoso, often slapstick, performance of these poems doesn't belie the seriousness, or the razor-sharp vision, of this collection. Kate Potts, Poetry London Yeh is a poet of imaginative transformation who creates worlds that borrow from art, fashion, the internet, and pop culture [...] this is an impressive book that I hope will be influential and widely read. Continual surprises, when coupled with the compression of her best poems, are why Discipline reads so well. Yeh's mastery of this tension rewards rereading over and over. Like a child at the bottom of a slide, I found myself wanting to start again as soon as I'd finished.' Matthew Valades, Quarterly West 'Such poems capture the universality of loneliness, the daily negotiations we make with our given bodily 'identities', and our desire to connect with other living beings, imperfect as those connections may be' Kathryn Maris, Times Literary Supplement 'Humour and linguistic dynamism, mainstream and counterculture, brush up against each other in Yeh's poetry' Rob A. Mackenzie, Magma 'Every word, image and space is arranged just so, and you can almost detect the hand of the poet making the final tweak' *Edwina Attlee, The Poetry Review, Summer 2019* 'Across her collections, Yeh affords much time and empathy...in sketching these ostensibly comic figures with idiosyncrasies and surprising expressions of fears, desires or dreams they come far closer to the reader than their technicolour exteriors might suggest...What stands out most for me about Yeh's work is its generosity, or rather its un-self-centredness. It takes a serious openness of heart to be so willing to appear so ludicrous, to so consistently prioritise the playful and culturally communal, to keep, as she demands of the poets she critiques herself, the time, energy and experience of reader to the fore of one's aesthetics.' Dave Coates, Dave Poems 'Like the paintings of Kirsten Glass that inspire Discipline's title poem, Yeh shows that the elegant and the macabre are never far apart.' Ben Wilkinson, The Guardian 'Discipline' offers an array of dark humour and electric wit...Yeh exposes the vanity of our emotional weight. The result is liberating and, yes, deeply funny.' Sandeep Parmar, PBS Spring Bulletin 2019 '"Haunting and hilarious" explorations of identity and performance prompted by videos and paintings, animals and street life.' The Guardian - '2019 in books: what you'll be reading this year' 'She is a brilliant technician. Her acute visual sensibility, the sensuousness of her descriptions, her gift for the creation of striking metaphors, her sensitive orchestration of sounds and the precision of her thought are all rich sources of pleasure for the reader.' Edmund Prestwich, Acumen 'Jane Yeh's The Ninjas is as unsettling and funny as its cover image... One is tempted to gobble down the exquisite poems one after another...' Sarah Coles, New Welsh Review 'The Ninjas is profound, funny and sad, reminding us that humans and androids are lonely and need love, and that attention to detail and kindness to animals can make a better world. This quirky and wise collection has outstanding originality and poise.' Aingeal Clare, Guardian	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! The Carcanet Blog One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: John Gallas read more Emotional Support Horse: Claudine Toutoungi read more
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