BRAVURA COOL
Jane Lewty
Have the generations fallen from the sky? Trooped here across a wind-whipped land, since there aren’t even promises made across time? Pain and paint work equally well, as Raworth notes and Jane Lewty repeats in this astonishing collection of poetry that is, yes, a radically new way of thinking of our time in the world.
-Fanny Howe, in selecting Bravura Cool as winner of 2011’s 1913 Prize for First Books
Bravura Cool is a poetry of place, but where neither self nor location are coherent. And to make sense of this two-fold exile, to triumph over its threat of madness, Jane Lewty turns to acoustic and visual mirrorings written in finely sculpted lines that tether her, and thus us, back to the world of something familiar. Then she, and we, may move again.
-Megan M. Garr, editor of Versal
Jane Lewty’s ravishing first collection occupies itself in its own undressing: etymologies, mishearings, and neologisms share space with smart colloquialisms, sassed philosophies, and impersonal personae. Here is a poet elegantly negotiating the machines of sense making, reminding us of our own dashed off said-so’s even as she unmasks language’s own discomforts, generative impossibilities, and luscious potentials. Lewty’s whistled world of repurposed beauty is an invitation. Are we ready?
-Sandra Doller, editrice of 1913
Jane Lewty is a poet and critic, currently a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam. She has co-edited two collections of essays, Broadcasting Modernism (University of Florida Press, 2009) and Pornotopias: Image, Apocalypse, Desire (Litteraria Pragensia, 2008). Her poetry has appeared widely, in journals such as jubilat, Word for/Word and Versal.