Böcker av Nathaniel Rosenthalis

Nathaniel Rosenthalis' Works and Days is a brilliant, lyrical, and exuberant collection of poems. Playful, tender, and often wise, these works combine self-portraiture, literary homage, familial anecdotes, mythological retellings, and philosophical contemplation to create a series of moving depictions of what it is to be human and part of a world of both great suffering and great joy. With humor, intelligence, and vulnerability, the poems examine themes of love, loss, beauty, language, and the meaning of art and art making. Works and Days is a work of great depth and heart.

Rosenthalis writes with the care of the maker of the universe, turning everything over from the world's tallest mountains to the smallest pebble on the beach, always landing on the exact word.

24 Hour Air is a cycle of twenty-four prose poems that takes place on the scale of a mythic day. Documenting each hour in this day, the cycle depicts different zones of the writer's life. A painting studio, the sands of Fire Island, a childhood bedroom, a game of Tetris; the death of a father, the loss of lovers, life synchronized with and without friends. Rosenthalis' systematic approach, where each poem takes its title and imagery from another poem in the cycle, releases a psychosomatic painterliness that apprehends what one poem calls, in a tongue-in-cheek gesture towards Shakespearean philosophizing, "quintessence." The attention to detail in these internal still lifes becomes ultimately life-affirming: "As long as a length happens, like a sheer black stocking, anyone can try on in-ness, I think." This is a world of spit, semen, and tears. These poems veer at times absurd and enigmatic, mysterious and quizzical, through an awe-inspiring faith in the power of the imagination. Departing from the famed contemporary American painter Jennifer Bartlett's series of twenty-four paintings, on permanent display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 24 Hour Air moves beyond conventional ekphrasis to become its own sensual and idiosyncratic autobiographical work of art.