In this Book
- Private Hunger
- Book
- 2002
- Published by: The University of Akron Press
- Series: Akron Series in Poetry
summary
Private Hunger, Melody Lacina's first collection of poetry, begins as a book of snapshots from a family album, becomes a carousel of color slides from travels in Europe, and concludes as a gallery of poems celebrating the vitality of the body and its enormous appetite for life. Lacina is also a poet who can say, in the credo that opens the book, "I believe in the underside ... the rhythm and off-rhyme of the ordinary." If this is a book about passion and "private hunger" ("Food and sex. / What else matters? Words."), it is also familiar with unsatisfied longings, losses, grief, and death, understanding how our desires sustain and torment us from childhood to the end. Lacina's succinct poems lift anecdote to revelation, in spare lines, taut rhythms, and a voice that can register anything from anxiety to ecstasy. It may not be rare, in these times, to find a woman writing evocatively about sensual pleasures, but it is surely unusual to discover a poet who also has this much sense of balance and control, and such lively command of the common tongue.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- I.
- BITTERSWEET
- p. 4
- WITH ONE EYE
- p. 11
- TWENTY-ONE
- p. 15
- TORNADO WARNING
- p. 16
- THE HEDGE ROAD
- pp. 24-25
- II.
- TEGUCIGALPA
- p. 31
- MCKENZIE BRIDGE
- p. 32
- CAMPING AT CALAVERAS
- p. 33
- THE MIDWEST
- p. 34
- DRIVING HOME
- p. 35
- ON THE TELEPHONE
- p. 36
- UNDER ETNA
- p. 39
- COVE IN ZINGARO
- p. 41
- AT SEGESTA
- p. 43
- 3 A.M., LISBON
- p. 45
- CONIMBRIGA
- p. 46
- III.
- RAIN IN JANUARY
- p. 52
- STARGAZING
- p. 54
- WASHING THE SHEETS
- p. 60
- THE READING
- p. 61
- THIRTY-NINE
- p. 69
- TALKING TO GOD
- pp. 71-72
- AFTER I DIE
- pp. 73-74
Additional Information
ISBN
9781935603979
Related ISBN(s)
9781884836886
MARC Record
OCLC
794701479
Pages
75
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-11
Language
English
Open Access
No