Zither & Autobiography

by Leslie Scalapino

Zither & Autobiography is comprised of two parts: the author's autobiography and a book-length poem entitled "Zither." Both parts of the book are concerned with facts and their undoing. In Autobiography, Scalapino explores her shifting memories of childhood-especially of years spent in Asia-experimenting with the memoir form to explore how a view of one's own life develops, how "fixed memories move as illusion." Zither opens with a unique narrative...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081956477X
• ISBN13: 9780819564771
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Don't pay attention to the reductive comments below

I'll admit this isn't my favorite work by Scalapino, as I prefer the sequences of "alien" perspective in 'Considering How Exaggerated Music Is,' or even the highly syncretic fragmentary prose of "dahlia's iris." But to assert this book is merely an excercise of a 'no-self' through writing is unfairly dismissive. 'Zither' is the often difficult (if one is trying to normalise it according to the confines of the traditional lyric) poetry of a mind in constant movement, constant accumulation, a risky "free fall" into the vicissitudes of self. This is a defiant poetry, one that frees itself from the received notions of a static one-dimensional language, yanks on the thread of the veil and restitches it. Scalapino certainly isn't the only poet who can be said to have done that, though she may be the most consistently thorough and brave.