Overview

A meditation on art’s longevity and the brevity of human life from the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of Frail-Craft and Inmost. Jessica Fisher brings “the faraway close,” through ruthless yet tender interrogations of possibility and permanence. Set against the backdrop of the fallen empire of Rome, Daywork takes its title from the giornata—the name in fresco painting for the section of wet plaster that can be painted in a single day, where each “day” is marked by the hidden seams in a finished painting. In a voice that is as poised as it is unmistakably urgent, Fisher aims to uncover what adheres against the fabric of history, and what becomes effaced over time. Her search leads her to discover signs of ruin of a different kind, and her poems begin to coalesce around a single perilous realization: that time is not merely an agent of erasure. Time is also a tether, rendering violence, beauty, grief, and art separate merely by a matter of days. “So you see once again,” she writes, “violence is to beauty / as the warp to the weft / always somewhere beneath.” Like the fresco itself, Daywork is committed to a time- and site-specific art, and to the daily work of creation. At once an elegiac meditation and a brave unearthing, this book expertly discerns the monumentalizing portrayals of history and its violences, while boldly illuminating other crucial accounts of everyday existence.

Full Product Details

9781639550722

Table of Contents

Reviews

Praise for Daywork “How stunning this book of poems—exquisitely intimate, philosophical, meticulous, and sensual. Daywork seems to be salvaged from an inner depth, as though written through a mythically long night. Its sensing, gleaming syntax is at once steadfast and veering. I am astonished by the darkness and the candle (both) of Fisher’s gorgeous, singular mind.”—Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria “In lyric meditations that dwell as much in grief as on the work of art—from Michelangelo and Raphael to Helen Frankenthaler and Louise Nevelson—Jessica Fisher refutes the underlying violence of everyday life with parables that tell of the ‘deathlessness of art, the ancient / stories once more transformed—.’ Her horizon is as vast as a fresco wall, even if the world can only be measured in what a day can encompass in lines akin to shadows cast from a hundred sources of light. These stunning poems seek to remember what it was like to be a ‘wire once, conductive, mute,’ compelled to make it ‘matter that we were here at the same time, late capital post-industrial.’ The profound tenors of Daywork so ebb and intensify as to unite the sonic and philosophical registers of intimacy; the understanding that because ‘everything was / saying goodbye, that I / should listen more closely.’”—Roberto Tejada, author of Why the Assembly Disbanded “What are the poet’s responsibilities in regards to witnessing and rendering violence? Arriving, like all of us, in the middle of history, Fisher’s speaker reaches toward the fresco and other forms of art in search, if not of answers, then of language that is alive enough to survive its encounters with grief. It is precisely Fisher’s masterful command over the line that allows Daywork to revel in unruliness and to confront, one frame at a time, the beauty and uncertainty of 'what it is to be alive now.'”—Franny Choi, author of The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On Praise for Jessica Fisher “Poetry’s distinction as a form centers on its capacity to mesmerize and haunt. Jessica Fisher’s extraordinary poems possess these qualities to a rare degree. She is, simultaneously, a fastidious, discriminating intelligence and a seer, a spell maker; her poems are, quite simply, among the most memorable poems of her generation.”—Judge’s citation for the Rome Fellowship in Literature, awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters “Her poems are analytic meditations, their variety and beauty manifestations of extraordinary sensitivity to English syntax.”―Louise Glück, author of The Wild Iris Praise for Inmost “What strikes me most profoundly, reading Fisher’s beautiful, formally experimental second book in tandem with Bogan’s Dark Summer, is how much the idea and fact of the mother—the absent mother, the longed-for mother, the admired mother, the terrified and terrifying mother, the loving mother—stalks the work of both women.”—Lisa Russ Spaar, LA Review of Books “Fisher is a writer of rare agility and grace. Her poems often move through ideas, form, and language with a singular restrained gesture. It is through these gestures that she manages to find something like a balance to the conflicts deeply rooted in Inmost. ‘We say mortar both for the shell and what it struck, brick & or stone &.’ Language is the site of her exploration, the gauzey space where the daughter becomes a mother, or where the body gives birth. It is a place of multiple meanings, and so of course a place of puns, ‘Immanent or emanant.’ It is the way we move through thought and the way our movement is restricted. ‘A month or a region, something you pass through. The roads on either side impassable, otherwise of course one would have chosen a different route.’ And it is in that movement that Fisher stays, not arriving or departing but seeing what happens if the language is taken for all its meanings. It is a dangerous place to be, and it is where we are.”—T Fleischmann, Rumpus Praise for Frail-Craft “Reading Jessica Fisher’s first collection of poetry is like wandering through a garden of forking paths that at times give suddenly, astonishingly, onto the sea. . . . Extraordinary. . . . These poems are reminders of how great a burden their frail craft can bear.”—Boston Review  

Praise for Daywork “How stunning this book of poems—exquisitely intimate, philosophical, meticulous, and sensual. Daywork seems to be salvaged from an inner depth, as though written through a mythically long night. Its sensing, gleaming syntax is at once steadfast and veering. I am astonished by the darkness and the candle (both) of Fisher’s gorgeous, singular mind.”—Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria “In lyric meditations that dwell as much in grief as on the work of art—from Michelangelo and Raphael to Helen Frankenthaler and Louise Nevelson—Jessica Fisher refutes the underlying violence of everyday life with parables that tell of the ‘deathlessness of art, the ancient / stories once more transformed—.’ Her horizon is as vast as a fresco wall, even if the world can only be measured in what a day can encompass in lines akin to shadows cast from a hundred sources of light. These stunning poems seek to remember what it was like to be a ‘wire once, conductive, mute,’ compelled to make it ‘matter that we were here at the same time, late capital post-industrial.’ The profound tenors of Daywork so ebb and intensify as to unite the sonic and philosophical registers of intimacy; the understanding that because ‘everything was / saying goodbye, that I / should listen more closely.’”—Roberto Tejada, author of Why the Assembly “What are the poet’s responsibilities in regards to witnessing and rendering violence? Arriving, like all of us, in the middle of history, Fisher’s speaker reaches toward the fresco and other forms of art in search, if not of answers, then of language that is alive enough to survive its encounters with grief. It is precisely Fisher’s masterful command over the line that allows Daywork to revel in unruliness and to confront, one frame at a time, the beauty and uncertainty of 'what it is to be alive now.'”—Franny Choi, author of The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On Praise for Jessica Fisher “Poetry’s distinction as a form centers on its capacity to mesmerize and haunt. Jessica Fisher’s extraordinary poems possess these qualities to a rare degree. She is, simultaneously, a fastidious, discriminating intelligence and a seer, a spell maker; her poems are, quite simply, among the most memorable poems of her generation.”—Judge’s citation for the Rome Fellowship in Literature, awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters Praise for Inmost “Her poems are analytic meditations, their variety and beauty manifestations of extraordinary sensitivity to English syntax.”―Louise Glück, author of The Wild Iris “What strikes me most profoundly, reading Fisher’s beautiful, formally experimental second book in tandem with Bogan’s Dark Summer, is how much the idea and fact of the mother—the absent mother, the longed-for mother, the admired mother, the terrified and terrifying mother, the loving mother—stalks the work of both women.”—Lisa Russ Spaar, LA Review of Books “Fisher is a writer of rare agility and grace. Her poems often move through ideas, form, and language with a singular restrained gesture. It is through these gestures that she manages to find something like a balance to the conflicts deeply rooted in Inmost. ‘We say mortar both for the shell and what it struck, brick & or stone &.’ Language is the site of her exploration, the gauzey space where the daughter becomes a mother, or where the body gives birth. It is a place of multiple meanings, and so of course a place of puns, ‘Immanent or emanant.’ It is the way we move through thought and the way our movement is restricted. ‘A month or a region, something you pass through. The roads on either side impassable, otherwise of course one would have chosen a different route.’ And it is in that movement that Fisher stays, not arriving or departing but seeing what happens if the language is taken for all its meanings. It is a dangerous place to be, and it is where we are.”—T Fleischmann, Rumpus Praise for Frail-Craft “Reading Jessica Fisher’s first collection of poetry is like wandering through a garden of forking paths that at times give suddenly, astonishingly, onto the sea. . . . Extraordinary. . . . These poems are reminders of how great a burden their frail craft can bear.”—Boston Review  

"Praise for Jessica Fisher""Poetry's distinction as a form centers on its capacity to mesmerize and haunt. Jessica Fisher's extraordinary poems possess these qualities to a rare degree. She is, simultaneously, a fastidious, discriminating intelligence and a seer, a spell maker; her poems are, quite simply, among the most memorable poems of her generation.""--Judge's citation for the Rome Fellowship in Literature, awarded by the American Academy of Arts and LettersPraise for Inmost""Her poems are analytic meditations, their variety and beauty manifestations of extraordinary sensitivity to English syntax.""―Louise Glück, author of The Wild Iris""What strikes me most profoundly, reading Fisher's beautiful, formally experimental second book in tandem with Bogan's Dark Summer, is how much the idea and fact of the mother--the absent mother, the longed-for mother, the admired mother, the terrified and terrifying mother, the loving mother--stalks the work of both women.""--Lisa Russ Spaar, LA Review of Books""Fisher is a writer of rare agility and grace. Her poems often move through ideas, form, and language with a singular restrained gesture. It is through these gestures that she manages to find something like a balance to the conflicts deeply rooted in Inmost. 'We say mortar both for the shell and what it struck, brick & or stone &.' Language is the site of her exploration, the gauzey space where the daughter becomes a mother, or where the body gives birth. It is a place of multiple meanings, and so of course a place of puns, 'Immanent or emanant.' It is the way we move through thought and the way our movement is restricted. 'A month or a region, something you pass through. The roads on either side impassable, otherwise of course one would have chosen a different route.' And it is in that movement that Fisher stays, not arriving or departing but seeing what happens if the language is taken for all its meanings. It is a dangerous place to be, and it is where we are.""--T Fleischmann, RumpusPraise for Frail-Craft""Reading Jessica Fisher's first collection of poetry is like wandering through a garden of forking paths that at times give suddenly, astonishingly, onto the sea. . . . Extraordinary. . . . These poems are reminders of how great a burden their frail craft can bear.""--Boston Review"

Author Information

Jessica Fisher is the author of Daywork. She is also the author of Frail-Craft, which won the 2006 Yale Younger Poets Prize, and Inmost, which was awarded the 2011 Nightboat Poetry Prize. Her honors include the 2012 Rome Prize, a Holloway Postdoctoral Fellowship in Poetry, and a research grant from the Hellman Foundation. She holds a PhD from University of California at Berkeley and is currently an associate professor of English at Williams College. She lives with her family in Western Massachusetts.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available