Belieu, Erin

Infanta

ISBN: 9781556591013
Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1995. First Edition. Signed by Erin Belieu. “Remind me of a similar devotion; / how the head, buried / deeply in the brush / and gully of damp flesh, / becomes platonic / in its gratefulness, / a perfect worship. / This is why one body, / fastened to the forest / of another, swells. / This wild dependence / of the host on guest.”--”Tick,” pg 53. Erin Belieu (b. 1965) is an American poet whose work focuses on gender, love, and history, filtering wide-ranging subject matter through a variety of theoretical frameworks. Belieu utilizes a visceral, raw, straightforward prose style that many would categorize as “street talk,” as opposed to a more academic or lyrical style and she is often concerned with class, gender, feminism, and various structures of systemic oppression. Belieu has authored a number of books of poetry, including: One Above & One Below (2000) [see item #7627]; Black Box (2006); Slant Six (2014); and Come-Hither Honeycomb (2020) among many others. She also co-edited the anthology The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women (2001) with poet Susan Aizenberg. Offered today is Belieu’s first book of poetry, Infanta (1995). Chosen for the National Poetry Series by Hayden Carruth (1921-2008), Infanta introduces Erin Belieu as a poet with an uncanny knack for listening and for locating the perspective of various others within her poems. Armed with humor, anger, and sensuality, she fuses the discursive methods of fiction to a lyric impulse, resulting in a remarkable book of portraits, mostly of people caught in ungainly moments of failure and self-revelation. As the back cover states: “Armed with humor, anger and sensuality, Erin Belieu fuses the discursive methods of fiction to a lyrical impulse, resulting in a remarkable first book. With unwavering attention to telling detail, she explores a model’s thoughts while posing, or draws portraits of people caught in ungainly moments of self-revelatory failure, or captures the bizarre systematic mental destruction of a fifteenth-century princess at the hands of her rapacious father, exposing the moments in which assumptions and presumptions are subverted.” From the collection of Dan Rzicznek (b. 1979), an esteemed Ohio poet who is also an academician at Bowling Green State University. Signed by Erin Belieu at title page in thin black ink beneath her printed name (which she has crossed out). Softcover. First edition though not explicated as such at copyright page, first printing as indicated by number sequence thereon. In very fine condition with only minor wear to fine edges and light smudging to front and back covers. Very Fine. [Item #7629]

Price: $25.00