One Above & One Below: New Poems

By Erin Belieu and Cleo Qian

Book Overview

Erin Belieu's debut, Infanta, was selected for the National Poetry Series and quickly sold through its large first printing. Both The Washington Post and the National Book Critics Circle named it as one of the best poetry books for 1993.

Now, in her second book, Belieu is proving herself a poet worthy of all the recognition. Coaxing a voice of urban chic from the dirt-filled roots of rural tension, these poems, many of which have appeared in publications such as The New York Times and The Atlantic Monthly, are as captivating as any in American poetry.

"Here are freshness and art...a distinctive new voice, outpacing conventional expectations."-Robert Pinsky
BR>Erin Belieu was born in 1965 in Omaha, Nebraska, and educated at the University of Nebraska, Ohio State University, and Boston University. In addition to winning the National Poetry Series, she has received the Academy of American Poets Prize. She teaches at Kenyon College in Cambier, Ohio.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556591446
• ISBN13: 9781556591440
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Funny, evocative, touching - a great read

Erin's poetry style is imminently readable, and a lot of the poems in One Above & One Below are positively fun. One of my favorites was "On Being Fired Again." The poet's wry sense of humor is evident even she deals with darker issues. She also has a remarkable ability to fashion a poem in a form to fit the content - you can tell the workmanship behind even casual-seeming phrases. I also recommend Infanta, which showcases a different, more melancholy facet of this writer.

Beauty and the Badlands

A spectacular second volume, this group of poems features settings as culturally central as Paris, but finds its home mostly in the badlands of Nebraska. Belieu places people in the most quotidian of circumstances (hanging out in the Dairy Barn parking lot, cooking stew in a pioneering sod house)and finds a way in each instance to reveal the richness of her character's imagination via an exact and lyrically rich procession of images. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the best that the youngest generation of American poets has to offer.