The Nerve Of It

Poems New and Selected

Emanuel's work in the new and previously collected poems presented here in an original sequence . . . reads as a single, independent text that makes clear the central concerns in her work and shows the development of various aesthetic and thematic tracks. . . . Emanuel's uninhibited manner and her noir sensibilities are constants, especially the finely wrought use of melodrama and the erotic. New readers will gain a strong sense of Emanuel's poetics, and those familiar with her work will see old poems in a new light as their shifted contexts draw out new resonances.

Publishers Weekly

Winner, 2016 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize

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Winner of the 2016 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets Emanuel’s version of a “new and selected poems” turns convention on its head. She ignores chronology, placing new poems beside old, mixing middle and early poems with recent work, and liberating all her poems from the restraints of their particular histories, both aesthetic and autobiographical. Whether writing in the comedic drag of the cartoon strip, or investigating the Mobius strip relationship between reader and writer, or exposing the humor and hurt that accompany visitations from Frank O’Hara and Gertrude Stein, The Nerve of It both stings and pleases with its intelligence, wit and vivacity. It breaks through, in ways that are bold, sexy, haunting and wry, the die-hard opposition of new and old, personal narrative and linguistic play, sincerity and irony, misery and hilarity. Open the book. Something new is happening here.

More Praise

Emanuel's extraordinary poetic intelligence, gutsy wit, and her images' ideal meld of the concrete and the ineffable amaze. What vibrant, resonant, nimble poems, each a perfect cocktail of acuity, objectivity, and heart.

Amy Gerstler

Lynn Emanuel's riveting volume is ordered as the story of a life, but the emphasis belongs on story; this poet is possessed by the inescapable elision, invention, and revision that telling entails. Her riddling, elusive poems pull the reader through memory mirrored and revealed, told by a narrator who slips in and out of her own skin, delivering, time after time, the truth of ardor, sorrow, and bewilderment in poems that pulse with sheer wild nerve.

Mark Doty

Already one of our most original voices, Emanuel has constructed a 'new and selected' that is both stunning and seamless. Excavating the previous work to reveal the emotional and aesthetic 'nerve' of it, Emanuel invites us to watch a mature and provocative artist emerge from the verve and dazzle that have always characterized her work.

Martha Collins

Every poem in The Nerve of It takes on a different tumult—from madcap to turbulent. The collection is vivid, sexy, and captures Emanuel's irrepressible drive.

Kimiko Hahn

Table of Contents

Sample

120 Pages, 6 x 8.7 in.

August, 2015

isbn : 9780822963691

Series

Pitt Poetry Series

Subjects

about the author

Lynn Emanuel is the author of Noose and Hook, Hotel Fiesta, The Dig, Then, Suddenly, and most recently, The Nerve of It, which received the Lenore Marshall Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her work has been collected numerous times in Best American Poetry and included in The Oxford Book of American Poetry. She has been published and reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, the Los Angeles Review of Books, BOMB Magazine, Poetry, and Publishers Weekly. She has been a judge for the National Book Awards and has taught at many venues including the Warren Wilson Program and the Bread Loaf Conference.

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