Dead Men's Praise: Poems (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780802136541)

With Dead Men's Praise, Jacqueline Osherow gives us her fourth and most ambitious collection yet. Her hybrid inspiration ranges from Dante's terza rima, to free verse, to biblical psalms, while always keeping the voice of casual conversation. In the book's centerpiece, Scattered Psalms, Osherow takes on the Hebrew psalms, the lyric heart of both the English and Jewish literary traditions out of which her writing comes. Combining the self-mocking inflections of Yiddish jokes with the pure lyric inspiration of biblical poetry, these poems range from Italian hill towns to Los Angeles contemporary art installations to the vanished Jewish world of the Ukraine, from imaginings of the future to recovery of the past. Her distinctive voice becomes a seemingly impossible fusion of the sublime and the down-to-earth.

Author: Jacqueline Osherow
ISBN-10: 0802136540
ISBN-13: 9780802136541
Publisher: Grove Press
Language: English
Published: 08/24/1999
Pages: 96
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 8.26h x 5.51w x 0.33d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 07/26/1999 pg. 85
Booklist 08/01/1999 pg. 2015
Booklist 03/15/2000 pg. 1316