Human Nature / / Alice Anderson.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Archive eBook-Package Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Anderson, Alice,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [2020]; ©1994
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

Human Nature explores, both seductively and horrificly, the redemptive possibilities found in an American girlhood gone wrong. Every one of Anderson's poems tells a story-dangerous, sensuous, sometimes crazy, sometimes sacred tales that take us into the heartbreaking reality and strangeness of a little girl who grew up the woman of the house; at once drink-maker, showpiece, secret-keeper, and object of lust. The terrain of incest and violence sets itself out on the page so subtely and plainly that the poems become mere containers for these extremes, a kind of prayer. Where formal grace might seem impossible, Anderson sings. And this is why the book -with all its darkness and danger-is, in the end, an affirmative one. The poems rise out of childhood's sorrows into a womanhood filled with the past, hell-bent on the future, and ready for a fight. In haunting, elegant verse, Anderson enters into the truth of experience. Through it all, the poems come to embrace those universal illuminations that arise out of--or even because of--suffering.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- CONTENTS -- I. -- THE SPLIT -- THE GOOD CHRISTIAN -- LICKING WOUNDS -- THE MARK -- WHAT THE NIGHT IS LIKE -- II. -- ANSWERS -- THE SUICIDE YEAR -- GIRL CADAVER -- THE TEST -- LOOKING FOR NICOLE -- III. -- SIBLING RIVALRY -- LITTLE GIRL CADAVER -- PLAYING DEAD -- DEFENSE -- BLUE-BLACKOUT -- IV. -- NEW JAPAN -- COMMUNION -- GRIEF -- TO THE WOLVES -- ESCAPE -- V. -- CEREMONY OF LIGHT -- CONVICTION -- THE FIGHT -- RETURN -- HUMAN NATURE