Rough Likeness: Essays by Lia Purpura (English) Paperback Book

Description: Rough Likeness by Lia Purpura Lyric essays that examine the smallest things imaginable--beach glass, the color "gunmetal," a mushroom--as well as states of being. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Lia Purpuras essays are full of joy in the act of intense observation; theyre also deliciously subversive and alert to the ways language gets locked and loaded by culture. These elegant, conversational excursions refuse to let a reader slide over anything, from the tiniest shards of beach glass to barren big-box wastelands. They detonate distractedness, superficiality, artificiality. In the process, Purpura inhabits many stances: metaphysician and biologist, sensualist and witness--all in service of illuminating that which Virginia Woolf called "moments of being"--previously unworded but palpably felt states of existence and knowing. Rough Likeness finds worlds in the minute, and crafts monuments to beauty and strangeness. Author Biography Lia Purpura is the author of seven collections of poetry, essays, and translations. Her book of essays, On Looking (Sarabande Books), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In addition, she has earned fellowships and prizes from Pushcart Press, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Program, the Maryland State Arts Council, Loyola University, the MacDowell Colony, the Associated Writing Program (in nonfiction), and Alice James Press (the Beatrice Hawley Award). Her essays and poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Orion, AGNI, and The Georgia Review, among others, and were cited five times in Best American Essays. Lia Purpura is on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop and is Writer-in-Residence at Loyola University in Baltimore, MD. She lives in Baltimore with her husband, conductor Jed Gaylin, and their son. Table of Contents On Coming Back as a BuzzardThe Lustres"Poetry is a Satisfying of the Desire for Resemblance"Against "Gunmetal"Street SceneBeing of Two Minds"Try Our Delicious Pizza"AuguryThere Are Things Awry HereJumpGreyAdviceOn LuxuryRememberingOn ToolsShits BeautifulMemo Re: Beach GlassTwo Experiments and a Coda Review "Lia Purpuras Rough Likeness is all about looking: at a landscape, at language, at a sign. The truest-looking, though, comes on the inside, as Purpura goes beneath the surface, writing not just about what she sees but what it means. Rain coming harder, she writes in her opening to Against Gunmetal. Of interest … because rain alters people in unexpected ways. And the unexpected makes people so human. … Remember that.—David Ulin, Los Angeles Times"Purpura (On Looking, 2006) ambushes us again in her second distinctive, piquant, and vibrantly original essay collection. Her opening piece, a wise, wry, and provocative tribute to a much-maligned creature, the buzzard, covertly contains an enlivening statement of artistic intent that illuminates all that follows. With a poets sensibility and a storytellers stride, Purpura creates essays that heat up like beakers over Bunsen burners as she boils down the concatenation of experience into whorled and gleaming words. She is partial to the partial—Scraps and spots, moments and lusters passing and glimpsed sidelong. She looks back to her Long Island childhood, paying homage to the gleaming, rocking sea; remembering how each new word felt radiant, commodious, and enchanting; and describing her grandmothers house and passing trains in a rhapsodic inventory of objects and auras. Her arresting impressions are fleshed out with avid research, as Purpura scrutinizes whatever snares her imagination, from the word gunmetal to the bodily substance we call shit. Fragmentation and abundance, sadness and splendor, Purpura discerns their meaning and celebrates their complex beauty."—Donna Seaman, Booklist"In each of the books 18 brief pieces, she strives to capture subjects that seem to defy close study: an adjective, a buzzard, bits of beach glass, a warning sign. Yet she finds something insightful to say about each of them, in large part because shes so careful with words, moving them as close as possible to those elusive truths."—Mark Athitakis, Star Tribune"Lia Purpura is at the forefront of the New Essay, and this latest book (her best) takes us much closer into the rough terrain of her quirky mind than she has ever gone before. The surprises and insights keep coming. Rough Likeness is an astonishment—a book to savor, read slowly, smile at, sigh at, and cherish."—Phillip Lopate"Lia Purpura is fierce. She creates a kind of word origami, folding phonemes and inquiries into intricate paper delights. Then she holds a magnifying glass over them, focusing her rapturous attentions through the lens, until twists of smoke appear, and geometries of flame and sparks rain. If language is, as she suggests in one essay, a game we all [agree] to play, then Purpura is at once a master of the game and a soulful, wild playmate."—Leah Hager Cohen"Lia Purpuras Rough Likeness is all about looking: at a landscape, at language, at a sign. The truest-looking, though, comes on the inside, as Purpura goes beneath the surface, writing not just about what she sees but what it means. Rain coming harder, she writes in her opening to Against Gunmetal. Of interest … because rain alters people in unexpected ways. And the unexpected makes people so human. … Remember that.—David Ulin, Los Angeles Times"Purpura (On Looking, 2006) ambushes us again in her second distinctive, piquant, and vibrantly original essay collection. Her opening piece, a wise, wry, and provocative tribute to a much-maligned creature, the buzzard, covertly contains an enlivening statement of artistic intent that illuminates all that follows. With a poets sensibility and a storytellers stride, Purpura creates essays that heat up like beakers over Bunsen burners as she boils down the concatenation of experience into whorled and gleaming words. She is partial to the partial—Scraps and spots, moments and lusters passing and glimpsed sidelong. She looks back to her Long Island childhood, paying homage to the gleaming, rocking sea; remembering how each new word felt radiant, commodious, and enchanting; and describing her grandmothers house and passing trains in a rhapsodic inventory of objects and auras. Her arresting impressions are fleshed out with avid research, as Purpura scrutinizes whatever snares her imagination, from the word gunmetal to the bodily substance we call shit. Fragmentation and abundance, sadness and splendor, Purpura discerns their meaning and celebrates their complex beauty."—Donna Seaman, Booklist"In each of the books 18 brief pieces, she strives to capture subjects that seem to defy close study: an adjective, a buzzard, bits of beach glass, a warning sign. Yet she finds something insightful to say about each of them, in large part because shes so careful with words, moving them as close as possible to those elusive truths."—Mark Athitakis, Star Tribune"Lia Purpura is at the forefront of the New Essay, and this latest book (her best) takes us much closer into the rough terrain of her quirky mind than she has ever gone before. The surprises and insights keep coming. Rough Likeness is an astonishment—a book to savor, read slowly, smile at, sigh at, and cherish."—Phillip Lopate"Lia Purpura is fierce. She creates a kind of word origami, folding phonemes and inquiries into intricate paper delights. Then she holds a magnifying glass over them, focusing her rapturous attentions through the lens, until twists of smoke appear, and geometries of flame and sparks rain. If language is, as she suggests in one essay, a game we all [agree] to play, then Purpura is at once a master of the game and a soulful, wild playmate."—Leah Hager Cohen Promotional $3000 marketing and publicity budgetAdvertising in Poets & Writers, Writers Chronicle, and Ninth LetterPromotion and publicity through the authors strong academic and creative writing contactsPromotion and publicity through author appearances at conferences and university speaking invitationsPromotion through the authors website (liapurpura.com)Newsletter and catalog mailing to contacts on Sarabande database as well as contact provided by PurpuraE-postcard distributed to Purpuras contactsInternet marketing campaign to include announcement on Sarabandes national listserve as well as review copy mailing to online journals and blogs Long Description Lia Purpuras essays are full of joy in the act of intense observation; theyre also deliciously subversive and alert to the ways language gets locked and loaded by culture. These elegant, conversational excursions refuse to let a reader slide over anything, from the tiniest shards of beach glass to barren big-box wastelands. They detonate distractedness, superficiality, artificiality. In the process, Purpura inhabits many stances: metaphysician and biologist, sensualist and witness--all in service of illuminating that which Virginia Woolf called "moments of being"--previously unworded but palpably felt states of existence and knowing. Rough Likeness finds worlds in the minute, and crafts monuments to beauty and strangeness. Review Quote "Purpura ( On Looking , 2006) ambushes us again in her second distinctive, piquant, and vibrantly original essay collection. Her opening piece, a wise, wry, and provocative tribute to a much-maligned creature, the buzzard, covertly contains an enlivening statement of artistic intent that illuminates all that follows. With a poets sensibility and a storytellers stride, Purpura creates essays that heat up like beakers over Bunsen burners as she boils down the concatenation of experience into whorled and gleaming words. She is partial to the partial Competing Titles A Field Guide to Getting Lost Rebecca Solnit 9780143037248 15.00 Penguin 6/2006 Halls of Fame John DAgata 9781555973773 15.00 Graywolf 4/2003 Description for Sales People On Looking, Purpuras previous book of essays, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism Accomplished essayist and teacher who has already begun receiving university invitations that should mean bookstore sales as well as course adoption Known as among the foremost practitioners of the lyric essay, with deep connections in that world, including a long and close relationship with the Nonfiction program at the University of Iowa Is a natural extension of women writing in relationship to nature, from Annie Dillard through Terry Tempest Williams and Rebecca Solnit Every essay in the collection has found previous publication in top-flight publications including Orion, Ecotone, and AGNI Details ISBN1936747030 Author Lia Purpura Short Title ROUGH LIKENESS Language English ISBN-10 1936747030 ISBN-13 9781936747030 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 814.54 Residence Baltimore, MD, US Birth 1964 Subtitle Essays Imprint Sarabande Books, Incorporated Place of Publication Louisville Country of Publication United States NZ Release Date 2012-01-05 UK Release Date 2012-01-05 Year 2012 Pages 224 Publisher Sarabande Books, Incorporated Audience General AU Release Date 2012-01-01 Publication Date 2012-02-02 US Release Date 2012-02-02 Illustrations Illustrations We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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