Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric

(Paperback)

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From the author of Citizen, a powerful meditation on life and death in the 21st Century Here, available for the first time in the UK, is the book in which Claudia Rankine first developed the 'American Lyric' form which makes her Forward Prize-winning collection Citizen so distinctive- an original combination of poetry, lyric essay, photography and visual art, virtuosically deployed. Don't Let Me Be Lonely is Rankine's meditation on the self bewildered by race riots, terrorism, medicated depression and television's ubiquitous influence. Written during George W. Bush's presidency in an America still reeling from the 9/11 attacks and charging headlong into war in Iraq, this is an early 21st-century work of great wit, intelligence and depth of feeling, with urgent lessons for the present.

Reviews

Rankine brilliantly pushes poetry's forms ... one is left with a mix of emotions that linger and wend themselves into the subconscious * The New York Times *
An unforgettable book ... mesmerizing ... terrifying -- Jorie Graham
A master work in every sense -- Robert Creeley
I don't know of a book of poems that so unabashedly, startlingly, successfully partakes of this contemporary combination of turbulence and torpor ... consuming * Pleiades *

Author Bio

Claudia Rankine is a poet, essayist and playwright; her numerous works include the ground-breaking American Lyric trilogy, Don't Let Me Be Lonely (2004), Citizen (2014) and Just Us (2020). A chancellor emerita of the Academy of American Poets, she is recipient of many honours including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Forward Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship. She is a professor of creative writing at New York University, and has previously taught at Pomona College and Yale University.