Description
Poetry. "In THE SEVEN VOICES, 'each poem is an abstract correlative of a subjective experience, a "refraction journal." Everything means exactly what it says.' Lisa Samuels writes as if basing language on something it is not; or as if (all) language, having no content, makes the motions of something else. So she deliberately voids the language as a daring means of creating an alternate that isn't in language as if outside by being the same as language. The writing shapes 'A tonal synchrony' in which the senses can correspond to something else (rather than to that synchrony). This correspondence occurs awkwardly by 'inaccommodation with the very shape.' Yet the synchrony holds so that 'that singularity is a violation of perspective.' She says about THE SEVEN VOICES, 'The title arises from Gnostic mysticism: the voices are angelic entities inhabiting the Treasury of Light. Apparently there are seven voices.' And 'nothing that happens is possible, so continuity and destructuring coexist across the falls.'"—Leslie Scalapino
Author Bio
Lisa Samuels is the author of seventeen books of poetry, memoir, and prose-mostly poetry—including ANTI M (Chax Press, 2013), Tender Girl (Dusie, 2015), SYMPHONY FOR HUMAN TRANSPORT (Shearsman Books, 2017), FOREIGN NATIVE (Black Radish Books, 2018), and THE LONG WHITE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING (Chax Press, 2019). She also publishes essays and edited work, and sound and video work, and recently has been involved with visual art and with film (TOMORROWLAND, 2017, based on Lisa's 2009 book and directed by Wes Tank). Born in the US, Lisa has also lived in Sweden, Israel/Palestine, Yemen, Malaysia, Spain, and since 2006 in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Author City: AUCKLAND NZL