That Was Now, This Is Then
Poems
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The brilliant new collection from Vijay Seshadri, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning 3 Sections
No one blends ironic intelligence, emotional frankness, radical self-awareness, and complex humor the way Vijay Seshadri does. In this, his fourth collection, he affirms his place as one of America’s greatest living poets. That Was Now, This Is Then takes on the planar paradoxes of time and space, destabilizing highly tuned lyrics and elegies with dizzying turns in poems of unrequitable longing, of longing for longing, of longing to be found, of grief. In these poems, Seshadri’s speaker becomes the subject, the reader becomes the writer, and the multiplying refracted narratives yield an “anguish so pure it almost / feels like joy.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After the maximalist approach of Seshadri's Pulitzer Prize winning 3 Sections, this contemplative fourth collection deploys his trademark philosophical mode with less sharply defined edges, and more room for interruptions and diversion. The first of the book's three sections features poems for the age of distraction. In "Robocall," a ringing landline causes "Three or four brand-new ideas not crisp/ or sensical but, still, helpful to me " to flee. The second section is anchored in grief; in "Collins Ferry Landing," an elegy to Seshadri's father, the poet observes, "Only rivers bottom out like this" before the lineated poem transforms into a dense prose block. These poems movingly capture the feeling of being suspended in a moment, as well as in a culturally mandated experience: "I wasn't just feeling grief but congratulating myself for it," the speaker admits. The book's final section ranges more broadly; one speaker notes that it is "at least a relief to know... you can emerge and re-enter the public sphere." Fans of Seshadri will find the thoughtfulness, humor, and lyric precision they have come to expect from the poet.
