Poet and essayist Ann Lauterbach is the author of ten previous books of poetry and three books of essays, including The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience and The Given & The Chosen. Her 2009 collection of poetry, Or to Begin Again, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Lauterbach’s work has been recognised by fellowships from, among others, the Guggenheim Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She is the Ruth and David Schwab II Professor of Languages and Literatures at Bard College. Born in New York City, she lives in Germantown, New York.
Judges’ Citation
Ann Lauterbach has brought together a suite of remarkable poems in her dazzling book Door, which troubles and stirs the paradox: the place for ‘self’ in mediated space.
Ann Lauterbach has brought together a suite of remarkable poems in her dazzling book Door, which troubles and stirs the paradox: the place for ‘self’ in mediated space. Her door is the existential hinge of the poetry. A poem is a door. A book is a door. We construct doors to keep probing eyes away. We shut ourselves into scriptoriums to convene with fear and hope, struggling how to weave the poem, what do we allow. Lauterbach’s tableaus, her subtle, multivalent sound, and panoramic consciousness—all shimmering, generous. She magnetizes others to enter, and deeply inhabit the sweep of her uniquely crafted, exquisite poetry.
Selected poems
by Ann Lauterbach
I said, There are fewer pills than there should be.
He said, A robot counts them.
My earlobe is torn. Can it be mended?
Probably, but by whom and how?
A needle and thread? A robot? Glue?
Have you noticed things in general seem torn?
Can they be mended? By what or whom?
I sometimes wish I could start again
in that other field with the magenta sky.
What to do with these ashes? What
to play when everyone is quiet and fearful?
Play some tunes from the border. Some
lyrics from the distant past of another country,
a place where no one knows the word robot.
The names are scented but blurry; they fall
down a mercantile ravine, awash with
meaning and the equations of logic
ripped from documents and thrown overboard.
The children are delighted; they cannot read.
They love the mighty mud and the relic tin cans.
What is that? they ask, staring at a rusty R.
It’s the beginning of something that ended long ago.
Copyright © 2023 by Ann Lauterbach, Door, Penguin Books
Count
- Poetry Foundation Profile
- Coming to Grips with the Ineffable: Conversation with Ann Lauterbach The New York Review of Books
- An Interview with Ann Lauterbach University of Arizona Poetry Center