Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds: Poems

By Eleanor Lerman

Book Overview

Eleanor Lerman, whose last collection, The Mystery of Meteors (2001), was named by Library Journal as "Best of Poetry, 2001," returns with a dazzling, funny, and seriously mature new book. In Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds , Lerman boldly wrests contemporary mysticism from a hard-knock New York Jewish consciousness. She's a solid witness to the 1960s, Cold War, Vietnam, sexual revolution, and drugs. However, in her favor, she's traveled through baby boomer irony, bought the T-shirt, and found her way back. Eleanor Lerman has been nominated for a National Book Award, received the inaugural Juniper Prize, and was the recipient of a fiction grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is a lifelong New Yorker.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1932511245
• ISBN13: 9781932511246
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: Sarabande Books
• Length: 88 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Seriously funny, stunning poetic voice

Lerman is awesome. Her poems are conversational, like she's talking right to you. Maybe over pie and coffee, maybe in black boots, stillettos. She's one smart, somewhat brash, and very funny woman: "Liquid metal debris, alien hieroglyphics, ranch hands threatened by the goverment--/I love it all! I love Area 51!" (We're Ready in Roswell). So when you read the poems, you feel as if you've joined one heck of a discussion, and Lerman is not afraid to challenge you, either ("Where are You?" Lerman demands in "Why we Need to Start a Dialogue"). I loved how sassy this narrator is, but also how unflinching: "and yes, that sure is/ my little dog walking a hard road in hard boots. And/ just wait until you see my girl, chomping on the chains/ of fate with her mouth full of jagged steel. She's damn/ ready and so am I" (That Sure is My Little Dog). My favorite poems were about science, where Lerman got fanciful and--dare I say it?--spiritual: "And this is true: You are a stardust person" (Muons are Passing Through You). This poet is a hard-hitter but there's no navel-gazing here, she makes the things she thinks about Universal...and they are. I didn't give this book 5 stars because I had to be honest. If I had grown up in the 50s, 60s, or 70s, I'm sure I would have connected to this book 100%. But I was born in 1980 in Los Angeles, so Nintendo, beaches, and the Simpsons make more sense to me than New York Jews, the Red Menace, and old Russian ladies. That's entirely personal and subjective, though. The book is highly recommended.