| Human Star Sarah Menefee Poetry Factory School. 2005. 84 pages, perfect bound, 6.5x9. ISBN: 1-60001-043-1 Description: From the homeless streets and the poor places rubbled by war, the ‘I’ of these poems is that of the anonymous ‘nothing that is all.’ The voice of this singular and collective subject is the music of the fire that rises from the cracks in the old brutal order, as an intimate whisper and a cry of the heart. |
|
| Sarah Menefee lives and works in San Francisco. Her previous books include I’m Not Thousandfurs and The Blood About the Heart (both from Curbstone Press), as well as numerous chapbooks. An Italian translation, Il Sangue Intorno al Cuore, was published by Multimedia Edizioni, and Human Star will be translated into Spanish in Caracas, Venezuela. She is a homeless and poor people’s rights activist, and a founding member of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America. He poetry can be seen at www.lrna.org and in the Big Bridge online journal. ‘Without vision, the people perish’ On Human Star... You’ve
always, and here as well, written a poetry with a compassion that
touches every image – inside or outside yourself – and
this is for me, simply, the glory of your work. The poem what is the light is one of the most absolutely
clear declarations of what’s inside that question asked of Hallaj
when he was on the scaffold. The “almost” unutterable anguish of an
individual’s absorption in another’s anguish (empathy
this, feeling with, but not the suffering of that particular anguish)
the desire and ability in empathy to help the other and the realization
that there has never been any help. Though the effort remains unquencable,
in that “almost” lies the requirement that poetry enacts.
Your sadness, your compassion, how human eye in the
name of comrade, rebel, poet, lover. Human Star is a beautiful book. For me it’s
your best, and not just because it’s the latest. You’ve
found a space to speak from – and about anything .. now with
a fully developed (objective) contemplative authority. What feels
like a calm but is actually a clarity. |
|
| Statement of Poetics | |
