Landlady in Bangkok

by Karen Swenson

Book Overview

Writing poems set in Southeast Asia, Swenson absorbs the anguish of colonization and dictatorship to reveal ordinary people and events with a sardonic humor, pathos, and hope. Selected for the National Poetry Series by Maxine Kumin."She is...a poet of consequence, bearing witness in charged language to all that she has seen."--"Wall Street Journal"

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556590679
• ISBN13: 9781556590672
• Release Date: June 1994
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Swenson's poems are mesmerizing.

I am still trying to wrap my mind around the idea of a glass tower in Cambodia filled with skulls overlooking a picnic ground. The poems consist of other such exquisite oxymorons. As a woman, I would hesitate to visit the countries about which Swenson writes; I am enriched by her travels.

Swenson's poems are mesmerizing.

I am still trying to wrap my mind around the idea of a glass tower in Camboda, filled with skulls "facing" outward in four directions, overlooking a picnic ground. Swenson takes us places we had not perhaps originally considered traveling as women alone, and we are richer for it.