Waiting for the Light
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- USD 17.99
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- USD 17.99
Descripción editorial
Winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award, poetry category
What is it like living today in the chaos of a city that is at once brutal and beautiful, heir to immigrant ancestors “who supposed their children’s children would be rich and free?” What is it to live in the chaos of a world driven by “intolerable, unquenchable human desire?” How do we cope with all the wars? In the midst of the dark matter and dark energy of the universe, do we know what train we're on? In this cornucopia of a book, Ostriker finds herself immersed in phenomena ranging from a first snowfall in New York City to the Tibetan diaspora, asking questions that have no reply, writing poems in which “the arrow may be blown off course by storm and returned by miracle.”
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"Do you agree that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice// Why would you think that," asks Ostriker (The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog) in an eerily prophetic moment toward the end of a collection in which she explores politics and people with her characteristic complexity and curiosity. The book is divided into four sections, the first two of which explore the vibrant microcosm of New York as depicted through a series of vignettes. In one, she describes a father whose son is killed in a traffic accident, and in the other she recalls a conversation with a Bangladeshi cab driver who "sighs a long, elegiac sigh,/ like a man who secretly knows how soon/ the world will be under water/ but does not wish to discuss it." In one of the collection's several ghazals, Ostriker skillfully unpacks the multiple meanings and associations of the word "America": "I said One Nation Invisible until corrected/ maybe I was right about America." Ostriker keeps a record of violence, inequality, and despair in the world, yet through it all finds refuge in a world of hope in which "you put on peace every day/ like pulling on a pair of pants."
