Full Description
Poetry that centers its movement on repetition—orbiting, unwinding, and returning.
Integrating Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, and the works of other poets, this collection explores narrative through abstraction and considers how repetition holds both the power to constrain and to generate. Freud explains how what we repress—what we know but don't want to acknowledge—reappears in our actions through repetition. Through slips of the tongue or selective memory, we engage with what our unconscious knows, finding knowledge through unknowing. The psychoanalytic session is centered on bringing forth repressed knowledge through acts of unknowing—speaking without thinking—which brings one closer to recognizing an obscured desire.
The poetry of Sweet Repetition works in ways akin to the psychoanalytic act. These pulsing poems follow the definitions of the word revolution—to revolve, change direction, unroll, unwind, happen again, repeat, orbit around. Images and words reappear in the motion of Cynthia Cruz's poems, inviting us into their revolutionary, political, and cumulative effects.
Contents
One
Nachtstilleben
Lamb
After Platonov
Clinic
Self-Portrait in Parked Red Camaro, Modesto, California
Fragment (Dora)
After Platonov
Clinic
Raspberry Syrup
A Horse Striking Its Hoof on the Ground at Midnight
Play in Which Darkness Falls
Two
In This Light the Junk Undergoes a Transfiguration; It Shines
Nachtstilleben
Untitled
Charity Balls
Fragment
Charity Balls
California
Nachtstilleben
Untitled
White Porcelain
Charity Balls
Day One
This Accident That Was My Life
Nachtstilleben
Untitled
Charity Balls
Clinic
Day One
Untitled
Three
All of Us or None
Acknowledgments
Notes on the Text
