In the Weather of the World


ISBN: 978-1-908836-23-6
Page Count: 102
Publication Date: Friday, February 15, 2013
Cover Artwork: Photo by Phyllis Gutmann, Martin Puryear sculpture
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About this Book:

“These poems embody what I most often love in poems: the contradiction of lucidity and strangeness, originality. Mostly urban, swift, and full of heart, we need not take shelter from the weather in this book. Its weather IS shelter!”  —Thomas Lux

“Estha Weiner writes poems that look effortless, yet their premise can change with every line, every syllable, like sonnets so honed as to be all volta. Erich Auerbach wrote that Dante discovered how to write about events, not just feelings. Weiner's poems are events themselves, contained whirlwinds; they can turn—as in ‘At the American Burger’—against the authorial stance.  In the Weather of the World is disciplined, volatile, subversive. It’s a thrill to watch Weiner’s lens zoom into an unassuming moment of daily life, inhabit it, and disclose the vast, strangely unexplored territories of contemporary history.”  —D. Nurkse

“In the Weather of the World—that is just where Estha Weiner places us: not in big blowhard storms, but in those subtle gem-like moments of aftermath where things become clear.  These poems are wise in the way of irony and wit, ‘those much misunderstood tools of the most humane,’ as Weiner says in one poem.   Most humane as well are her understated compassion, and her fine eye for the telling gesture that shows us ourselves, both as individuals and as citizens of a larger world.  These marvelous poems give us the gift of a ‘heart cracked wider,’ and do so with a touch that is light and sure.”  —Betsy Sholl

“How you don’t explain.  How you offer room for silence and stillness.  How you trust the poem to do its work.  Some poems, even those I like, feel as if the end is their final accomplishment, that is, once I’ve finished reading, I’m done, feel little desire to return, to experience them again, since the experience has already been had.  Your poems invite me back, are places that invite my lingering.  Moreover, they are the poems of poet as grown woman; their agenda does not seek to dazzle or impress or wow across their surfaces.  Instead of glamour I find nuance.  I experience joy in your work similar to the joy I find in the Chinese Book of Songs and Chekhov.  Szymborska meets Akhmatova out of your own particular experience”  —James Tolan