Soft targets

by Deborah Landau

Paperback, 2019

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Available

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Publication

Port Townsend, Washington : Copper Canyon Press, [2019]

Description

Deborah Landau's fourth book of poetry, Soft Targets, draws a bull's-eye on humanity's vulnerable flesh and corrupted world. In this ambitious lyric sequence, fear of annihilation expands beyond the self to an endangered planet on which all inhabitants are "soft targets". Her melancholic examinations recall life's uncanny ability to transform ordinary places - subways, cafés, street corners - into sites of intense significance that weigh heavily on the modern mind. 'O you who want to slaughter us, we'll be dead soon / enough what's the rush,' Landau writes, contemplating a world beset by political tumult, random violence, terror attacks and climate change. Still there are the ordinary and abundant pleasures of day-to-day living, though the tender exchanges of friendship and love play out against a backdrop of 21st-century threats with historical echoes, as neo-Nazis marching in the US recall her grandmother's flight from Nazi Germany. Deborah Landau is director of the Creative Writing Program at New York University. She has published three previous collections in the US, most recently The Uses of the Body (2015) and The Last Usable Hour (2011) with Copper Canyon Press. CNN commissioned an op ed piece from her, 'We are all soft targets', in the light of US inaction on gun control following the latest shootings in August 2019.… (more)

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LibraryThing member over.the.edge
Cooper Canyon Press is an independent, non-profit small press located in Port Townsend, Washington. Since 1972 they have specialized in poetry.
Although they have been around since 1972, they are new to me and I'm so excited I found them. I have always loved poetry, and so far have read two of their
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many many titles.
I highly recommend you check out any of their many titles. Amazing minds!

Soft Targets by Deborah Landau. 2019

This is Landaus 4th collection of poetry. These poems embrace the pain of troubled times- increase in violence, decrease of morals, violence, terror attacks, hate crimes, climate change and also the love we embrace and share. As people, in these times, we've been made soft targets by the lack of leadership and strong minds besetting our communities.
Brilliant and timely, I loved the depth of these poems.

sex
These poems feature transformation, overcoming huge odds and finding the beauty of life in every situation.
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11972
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