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 THE
WANTON SUBLIME: A Florilegium of Whethers and Wonders
Tupelo Press 2006
ISBN: 1-932195-39-4, 978-1-932195-39-2
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In her dazzling third volume of poetry,
Anna Rabinowitz creates nothing short of a new genre of utterance as
she cuts through pieties and myths to get at the essential humanity
of the Virgin Mary, and, ultimately, of all women.
The Wanton Sublime is an “anthology” of texts and
commentaries that propels us on a breathtaking journey mapped by
questions, conversations, and speculations—a journey to the very
foundations of womanhood and motherhood.
Again and again Mary, exemplar of the feminine, quintessential
mother, bearer/birther of divinity is re-visioned and re-defined;
she is made kindred to Io, to Europa and to an ancient Egyptian
woman who may have been the first unflinchingly assertive feminist.
Rabinowitz investigates Mary as concept and as fact, as symbol and
as flesh-and-blood female.
What does it mean to be chosen? How does one engage with otherness?
What forces operate when one’s life is interrupted? Are there
possibilities of alternative narratives? How does one process the
condition of not knowing? Linguistically brilliant and stylistically
inventive, this daring work makes the universal particular, the
particular universal.
The Wanton Sublime explores the burden, the dilemma
and the glory of being as it leads us to a renewed appreciation of
what it means to be alive and a woman.
from
Publishers Weekly:
The editor of American Letters and
Commentary, Rabinowitz investigates the mysteries, myths and
cultural accretions around the Virgin Mary in this third collection;
Mary becomes, in these rapt and provocative poems, both a symbol of
ecstatic transcendence and a focus for questions about gender and
power. Drawing eclectically on forms from rhyming quatrains to e. e.
cummingsesque typography, Rabinowitz re-imagines the Annunciation as
a "Manysplendoredmoonmottledmarvel of the metaphysical," presenting
a Virgin "entrapped/ and captive," "disarmed/ by angels/ a heart
unarmed/ in evernow," insisting in dramatic capitals that angelic
"LIGHT NEED NOT BE EXPLAINED." She places Mary in a tradition of
mystics from Pythagoras and Greek myths to Catholic saints,
leavening her paeans and chants with references to skeptics such as
Michel de Montaigne. Rabinowitz's technique can be extravagant, but
it may be the only way to do justice to the extreme emotions and
ambitions she describes: "And with her YES a future world takes
shape."
Read More
Read more about THE WANTON SUBLIME on
Publishers Weekly Religion Bookline
from
Booklist:
Following her acclaimed book-length poem, Darkling (2001), this
innovative examination of the Annunciation uses a collagelike,
fractured narrative to explore the complex possibilities within the
sacred story. Florilegium refers to "a collection of excerpts from
written texts" and, in Latin, relates to flower gathering. The poems
do form a "bouquet," plucked from varying sources of truths, lies,
and artistic inquisition. Rabinowitz is a highly intellectual poet
with unique vision and a distinct voice. She knows the rules of
poetry and breaks them beautifully, bending words and forms to her
purpose. Some poems seem a tad gimmicky as they follow
linguistic/mental association, but others succeed in lending a
lightheartedness that demonstrates that Rabinowitz does not take
herself too seriously. This does not, however, lessen her respect
for her subject matter, or for her role as translator of thought or
"vessel through which the music passes" (as Stravinsky called
himself). Some readers will find Rabinowitz challenging, but all
will be sent on a journey into fresh poetic and philosophical
territory.
—Janet St. John
from
Library Journal:
Often using a series of responses, reflections, and interpretations
to ancient florilegium (a collection of excerpts), Rabinowitz
(Darkling) writes about the Annunciation and Mary, who says, "Though
I be mute, unseen, do not be ignorant of me." The author uses text
as scaffolding, creating a field of words that seems to occupy and
rise above the page, a meditative texture that is ironic and
transcendent. Rabinowitz also contracts with multiple choices and
voices to explore the human issues, which envelop the Annunciation,
and the LIGHT [that] CANNOT BE EXPLAINED. The question of Mary's
being game or tool seems central to her poetic arguments. Rabinowitz
portrays Mary as both maiden who submits (reluctantly? willingly?)
and mother who truly anguishes over the loss of her child ("She is
and remains a mother/ even though her child die") and his eventual
denunciation of her. As in her previous book, Darkling, Rabinowitz
seems to inscribe the past to interpret and honor it: "For the child
she will have boundless love/ For posterity the memory of being/ For
her life no proper translation." Recommended for contemporary poetry
collections.
—Karla Huston
from
Jacket Magazine
Something is afoot in poetry. Joining the ranks of collections of
largely self-possessed, discrete poems are poetic sagas, story-long
volumes that signal not only a rebirth and reinterpretation of the
ballad but lay challenge to the more traditional literary forms
assumed to rule over narrative, be they fictions short and long,
historical accounts, or philosophical treatises. ...These new books
have long legs and curiously complex nervous systems, sending
feedback loops forward and backward through the collection. For the
reader, the effect is somewhat akin to moving through a thicket of
voices reprising and clarifying previous conversations even as they
amend and add to them.
Though we have a handful of contemporary poets, as well as not so
contemporary influences, to thank for this new wave in poetry's
ocean, we can glean much about the movement, if it be one, through a
singe poet and her third and latest collection of verse: Anna
Rabinowitz and The Wanton Sublime: A Florilegium of Whethers and
Wonders. Read
more
from
How2
In The Poet, Emerson writes that "the history of hierarchies
seems to show that all relisious error consisted in making the
symbol too stark and solid, and was at last nothing but an excess of
the organ of language." In her most recent book of poetry, The
Wanton Sublime: A Florilegium of Whethers and Wonders, Anna
Rabinowitz makes physically present the Annunciation, the moment at
which Mary was told she would bear Christ. The "stark and solid"
representation of Mary is undone in the gesture towards making
physical both Mary as a person and the act through which she
conceived Christ. In doing so, Rabinowitz creates a tension between
mysticism and physicality, proposing a possible amalgam of the two,
where Mary can be both divine and real, metaphor and actuality,
transcendent and corporeal.
Read more
from
Blogcritics.org
In her third volume of poetry, The Wanton Sublime, Anna Rabinowitz
creates an extended meditation upon the Annunciation — the moment
that starts everything in traditional Christian believing — the
moment the angel Gabriel appears to a young Mary and tells her she's
going to be the mother of God. As a Protestant male, I may not be
best positioned to review such poetry. More so given that I belong
to a denomination which is comfortable ordaining openly gay clergy.
In the faith community I frequent concerns about the Annunciation
have been tossed into a dusty remainder bin, and its controversies
passed long ago. Why should I care what women are saying now about
the Annunciation?
Read more
from
The Catholic Register of Canada
“To those who have a firm view of Mary's role in salvation history,
some of the poems' stark imagery may appear to push the boundaries,
but to those who want to probe deeper into their faith, The Wanton
Sublime poses challenges that may even strengthen their belief.”
-Patria Rivera
from NewPages
The elliptical subtitle of Anna Rabinowitz's The Wanton Sublime says
as much about the forthcoming poems as any explanation can: A
Florilegium of Whethers and Wonders. In the Catholic Church,
Florilegia are collections of patristic writings excerpted and
compiled to serve either dogmatic or ethical purposes, but here
Rabinowitz appropriates the form to serve her own poetic and
metaphysical purposes. That is, she challenges the dominant
patristic (read masculinist) vision of femininity, exploring the
untold “whethers and wonders” of gender in the historical
imagination of western culture. Rabinowitz begins her exploration in
the image of Mary's face from Michelangelo's Pietà, appearing in
extreme close-up, blurred, and earth-toned on the book's cover.
Similarly, the poet herself blurs the idea of youthful feminine
chastity that the Virgin Mother has always represented.
Read more
Anna Rabinowitz’s riveting linguistic experiment
is at once a celebration of and a quest for an understanding of what
we have come to accept as “the eternal feminine.” Timely and
important,
The Wanton Sublime is a must-read.
—Claudia Rankine
Anna Rabinowitz
has made a voice out of all the sounds surrounding her. As she says:
"That which installs itself in the mind embraces sound / Rebounding,
/ rounding the fecund earth." There is such passionate love of the
found earth, in spite of the pain it causes, in Rabinowitz's poems
that hers is now one of our most necessary voices.
—Bin Ramke
“Cast thine gaze
upon me,” a mother beseeches her son and, in this entreaty, Anna
Rabinowitz refracts the narrative of the Annunciation. The Wanton
Sublime links the gaze of Mary with the gaze of the viewer with the
gaze of the reader and the gaze of archangel/Muse/perp/lover,
asserting that there is a 'known thing' between object and sign, a
link between essential experience and what we fashion from it.
The Wanton Sublime is a generous, inspired book by a poet of
clear intelligence and bounteous gifts.
—Susan Wheeler
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