New Releases by Rika Lesser

Il était une fois un pauvre bûcheron qui vivait à l'orée d'une grande forêt. Comme il n'arrivait plus à subvenir aux besoins de ses enfants, Hänsel et Gretel, et de leur mère, il en était malheureux. C'est alors qu'un soir sa femme lui dit : "Ecoute, mon mari, il faut que tu fasses quelque chose si nous ne voulons pas tous mourir de faim..." Terreur et angoisse d'enfants abandonnés dans la forêt, délices d'une maison merveilleuse toute faite de friandises, rencontre d'une ogresse déguisée en vieille femme... Adapté de la première transcription du conte et de son édition originale, le texte épuré de la poétesse américaine Rika Lesser redonne à l'histoire des Grimm toute sa force primitive, sa puissance primaire.

"...This time, and in a very different place, the poet ventures upon a much more perilous dig, framing an archeology of the self which requires not only testimony but evidence, not only comment but construction. She disinters along 'boundaries of pain' which Dickinson, her surest mentor, identifies as 'capacious as the sea.' Great accuracy and great tenacity were required to write these poems,in which a significant amount of going under is...undergone. Readers, as well as the writer, must 'in the destructive element immerse'; but by trusting Lesser's method (relentless questioning, dogged reversion to the charge, ironic skepticism as the prolegomenon to any future therapeutics) even as she follows her great predecessor in evidential texts, we ascend with her into radiance...."--Richard Howard on Rika Lesser's work

Growing Back, Rika Lesser's third collection of poetry, is a bridge that spans the poets and languages, family and friends she has made her life and its work. Written over two decades, many of the poems in this three-part collection predate those found in her acclaimed Etruscan Things and All We Need of Hell. In this latest volume, the well-known translator of Swedish and German poetry offers readers a selection that locates, embodies, and anchors the continuing achievements of her poetic work. In the first section, "Away," Lesser writes of her long relation to Sweden, her adoptive country. In the second, "The Gifts," she records her return home. The last, "About Men," displays her preoccupation with translation -of literature, of life, of "others" she finds in need of interpretation, whether they are poets like Ekelöf and Rilke, or quite generally members of the opposite sex. Growing Back, like her other collections, reveals Lesser's poetic undertaking to be a rhythmic making of forms, in which language and content kick against the limit of lines that are most often syllabically determined.

Rika Lesser through-composes her books of poems; they are not albums but unities. They are meant to be read in one sitting and can be fearfully intense. In Etruscan Things she followed the circular map of the Etruscan heavens. In All We Need of Hell she seeks to escape the locked boxes of psychiatric wards and medical categorizations. When she succeeds - and she must - it is through art to life. These poems will inevitably be compared to those by other poets who have struggled with depressive illnesses. Rarely, however, does a poet address such topics as illness, mental illness, suicide, and death as singlemindedly as Lesser does here.

The Description for this book, Rilke: Between Roots. Selected Poems Rendered from the German by Rika Lesser, will be forthcoming.