Overview

If ""politics is personal,"" many of these poems address politics in various guises: interpersonal, social, and traditionally ""political."" The ""human hive"" and ""poetry worlds"" sometimes appear as a basis for the 'action.' In some sense, the themes form a loose self-portrait of the author's concerns and obsessions; in another sense, the poems often elect to try to transcend the personal, to achieve more ""objective"" over-views of human activities and experiences. Many are inter-social; relationships between men and women are one common theme. Love and the complex of attendant relations are another thread throughout the book. The conglomeration of seemingly obsessive themes and subject matters may offer a kind of self-portrait of the author: intentionally or not, this book can be read as a kind of Self Portrait in a Funhouse Mirror.

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9781962847476

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Reviews

""Schloss's RATIONAL ANIMALS is a mind-zoo containing many interesting beasts. I'm reminded of Gahan Wilson's zoo animals in their topcoats and hats, punching their time-cards out at quitting time, ready to catch the subway home. The faces attached to the bodies of Schloss's characters know themselves all too well and don't know themselves at all; taken together, they are a snapshot of a 'New York minute'-anxious, lovable, annoying, whimsical. Much like the rest of us on a good day. ""-James Cummins ""David Schloss seems to be reinventing classical forms and meter (not aping them), and using his newly orchestrated voice to speak profound truths on vital issues of our day. But for all this he hasn't lost the cool, calm lyricism of his love poems and quirky meditations on how the world happened to turn out the odd way it did."" -John Ashbery

Author Information

David Schloss was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1944. He was educated at Columbia University, 1960-1; The University of Southern California School of Cinema, 1961-2; Brooklyn College (BA, 1965); The University of Iowa Writers Workshop (MFA, 1967). Taught Poetry at The University of Cincinnati (1968-74), Miami University (Ohio), 1974-2014, Osher Lifetime Learning Institute (U. of Cincinnati), 2017 - the present.

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