Siste Viator

by Sarah Manguso

"This book is for those of us who want to read more poetry but are frequently stopped by its--what is it? Its chilly self-seriousness? Its unwillingness to hold our hand every so often, while cracking... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1884800696
• ISBN13: 9781884800696
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Four Way Books
• Length: 74 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

It Means, "Stop, Traveler"

My publishers always tell me to refrain from titling my books in any other language than English, and yet Sarah Manguso has found a wide audience for her poetry even when her book has a Latin name. I like it, for it gives the book a sort of ancient Ruskin feeling, or Carlyle, something very solid you can sink your teeth into. In addition we are more likely to respond to a plea like "stop, stranger," when we hear it in Latin. Manguso's writing seems fast on its feet, colloquial and speedy like that Mineola Prep boy Frank O'Hara idolized, and yet it has a quiet slow side to it, its long lines sometimes slowing to a crawl by the time they meet the right margin of the page, thus matching the request its title makes, as if to say, if you will be still, so will I. Her poems about poetry itself have an amusing steel to them ("Sing to me little face/ Sing of the little faces you remember from life") but this collection improves on her first in its treatment of love and sensuality. If you've read Mina Loy's "Pig Cupid" poems, and wanted to see more of them, SISTE VIATOR might sate your need, though Manguso's contemporary love of contingency is far removed from Loy's modernism. The talking animals and objects of CAPTAIN come back anew, and the cryptic metaphors--the lovers as "two volumes lying on the bed,/ Maybe mystery novels, touching." In "Thers Is Such a Thing," an ageless voice comes out of lost eons to reminisce, "I spoke to fire as to a bright lover in the forest/ Whose brightness was for me." I wish there were a bit more stanzaic variety, or maybe a few poems that were longer than a page. Nowadays the short poem has returned with a vengeance, perhaps designed to fit into one computer screen, or written on a computer, no scrolling down. It's not that Manguso's lyric inspiration seems ever to flag, perhaps she just feels more comfortable writing in short spurts, but it makes for a certain sameness which many will find comforting. Everything else is so strange, unique, disconcerting; its beauty comes from the underside, like a log turned over on the forest floor to reveal a fan of truffles. When you're jaded with other poetry, that's when you go to Sarah Manguso. Young people of today turn to her writing the way people of my age once went to stand in front of Nico at the time of her MARBLE INDEX, or parsed out the lyrics to Love's FOREVER CHANGES, shuttling like metronomes in front of the stage. She will long be imitated, but the weary animation of her best work will never be equalled. She might have done without that quote on the back of the book from Dave Eggers though. If the point is that here is a poetry for people who don't like "poetry," the poems make that claim all by themselves, and if she were "Anne Carson's ne'er-do-well niece," would we want to read a whole book by her? Maybe Johnny Carson's ne'er-do-well niece.

The Captain Rides Again!

Fans of THE CAPTAIN LANDS IN PARADISE will not be disappointed in Manguso's new work. Simultaneously dark and playful, it is startling in its insights and imagery (...I'm on my knees in the music room, driving the brush tip into my open eye./I am painting myself a bridge. I can almost see it.") and slyly funny ("My favorite euphemism for death is the future"). Dark though they often are, the poems function as a kind of lullaby not to be afraid of the dark, and are strangely comforting. Manguso's is a unique voice and sensibility, and SISTE VIATOR a book to read over and over.