Is This Scary?: Poems - Softcover

Scheier, Jacob

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1770416056 ISBN 13: 9781770416055

Verlag: ECW Press, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

A challenging exploration of mental illness and disability from Governor General’s Award winner Jacob Scheier.Is This Scary? digs deep into internal landscapes of suffering, including depression and anxiety, chronic physical ailment, and rare neurological malady. With its many eccentric songs and odes to medications and medical procedures, this book is full of both levity and unapologetic lament. Pushing back against societal stigma, Is This Scary? unflinchingly addresses experiences of psychiatric institutionalization and suicidality, without either romanticizing or pathologizing them. Scheier rejects much of the mainstream cultural views of mental illness, subverting the biochemical model by emphasizing the radical subjectivity of mental suffering. While the poems render the difficulty of communicating pain to others, they defiantly celebrate its expression and evocation through visceral lyricism.Scheier also challenges our culture’s desire to be inspired by stories of “triumphing” over illness and disability. Nothing is overcome here, the journey from illness to wellness is one of narrative and aesthetic disruption. The perpetually incomplete search for self and home is ultimately at the heart of this book: along with being a person with disabilities, the poet-speaker identifies as a Diaspora-Jew, engaging exile as a chronic state of being that isn’t intended to be resolved, but rather explored, expressed, and honored.Ode to PrednisoneHerr Pill! You murder sleep.Eugenicist Cortisol, re-make me—ox-strong, moon-faced, onioned-skin.Hugs are dangerous.Performance-enhancing drug for poets—you triple feelings. Elegies for the late train & spilled milk.Anxiety is Everything.Threatened by the light that brightens the dark.Dread tolerates Ativan.Faustian Chemical, you resurrect mythslike Lazarus. He was never the same.Charon-ian Steroid,I’ve been to that shore the dead clamour for. Sales and Market BulletsMore to Keep Us Warm, Scheier’s debut poetry collection, was the winner of the 2008 Governor General’s Award for English poetry.Jacob Scheier is an award-winning journalist whose articles and essays have been published in the Globe and Mail, NOW Magazine, Brick, and more.“This slim volume is packed with rich, complex, powerful poems about a wide variety of subjects. All are worthy of generous time to read and savor them, letting the chains of words roll around in one’s mind or off one’s tongue. This will be a poetry lover’s favorite.” — The Sacramento Book Review on Letter from BrooklynMore to Keep Us Warm showcases his witty and self-reflexive handling of themes such as war, death, love, and religion … Scheier’s deft shifts in tone complicate what could easily turn into banal lyrical confessions but which, here, become provocative and ethical conundrums that force the reader to reevaluate certain assumptions.” — Canadian LiteraturePublishing Diverse VoicesAuthor: Diaspora-Jew, #ownvoicesContent: Disability, mental illnessAudienceContemporary poetry readersCanLit poetry crowd and reviewersPromotional PlansEarly review copies to book and library trade publications, and literary journalsFeature on National Poetry Month newsletterVirtual poetry book tour through various reading seriesSocial media promotion using excerpts and cover art

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jacob Scheier is a Toronto-based poet, essayist, and journalist. He is the author of two previous poetry collections, including the Governor General’s Award–winning more to More to Keep Us Warm (ECW, 2007). His poems, articles, and essays have appeared in journals, magazines, and anthologies across North America.

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Ode to PrednisoneHerr Pill! You murder sleep.Eugenicist Cortisol, re-make me—ox-strong, moon-faced, onioned-skin.Hugs are dangerous.Performance-enhancing drug for poets—you triple feelings. Elegies for the late train & spilled milk.Anxiety is Everything.Threatened by the light that brightens the dark.Dread tolerates Ativan.Faustian Chemical, you resurrect mythslike Lazarus. He was never the same.Charon-ian Steroid,I’ve been to that shore the dead clamour for.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: ECW Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1770416056
• ISBN 13: 9781770416055
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 76
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Deutschland