Peace

Peace is haunted by personal and political history-by figures of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Thoreau–by current senators and dead musicians, by speech and painting, by extraordinary and ordinary lives. Written as though at the threshold of a continual co-presence and comingling of peace and war, Peace moves just beyond outrage and anger to bring the reader to revelations and shifts of consciousness, to possible visions and sightings in the shattered yards of the global dream.

About the Author :
GILLIAN CONOLEY, born in Austin, Texas, is author of seven collections, including TALL STRANGER, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She's received Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from APR, an NEA, and Fund for Poetry Award. Her poems have been anthologized widely, including Norton's Postmodern American Poetry, Norton's American Hybrid, Best American Poetry. Her translations of Henri Michaux will appear in City Lights Pocket Poets. Editor/founder of VOLT, she is Professor & Poet-in-Residence at Sonoma State and lives in SF Bay Area.

Review :
"Conoley's acute historical awareness leads to a disconnection of self: "[O]bsolete/ hands reaching but not reached/ and pushing glass away// more room now." Yet her deep, human concerns highlight an ethics and perspective that is both constantly articulated and continually questioned, reviewed, and revised: "What are we to the man/ who attacked the gunman/ as he started to reload, a constituency?" This articulation takes intelligence and humor--"I didn't want my eyes to be/ my reality negator"--and what's more is that Conoley's politicized language never buries the personal, nor her personality: "[A]t my father's funeral, a blind field/ the flag taken from over the casket/ folded into a triangle, handed to us/ throughout 'the reception'/ a boy eyes a pizza slice/ on a white paper plate."-- "Publishers Weekly" "Drawing on a range of registers--the geographic and technologic, emotional and workaday--Conoley explores several categories of peace, broadly construed: the peace of armistice, of reflection, of liberation, of death. In her sparse, inventive lyric mode, Conoley weaves personal and political threads into an incantatory not-quite-narrative whose power lies in the gravid spaces between juxtaposed images and thoughts. It is in the emergent rhythms of "each euphoriant ephemery" that Peace finds its logic--and, perhaps, its peace."--Maggie Millner "ZYZZYVA" "White space percolates this lyric, while the current lull in American military actions forms the occasion of this book, Gillian Conoley's seventh poetry collection. With poems titled "late democracy," "[Peace] contrary to history," and "Trying to Write a Poem about Gandhi," the work pulls one way and then pushes back another, testing the inner ground for breath."--A. Anupama "Numero Cinq" As a whole, Gillian Conoley's Peace is a compassionate and coherent plea for contemporary humanity to accept the principles of love and non-violence which guided Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Embracing an unsparing postmodern sensibility, she wages her argument for "peace" in poems that are innovative and effective. These poems ably demonstrate that the moral responsibility of the avant-garde is not only to heighten and rework our aesthetic perceptions but also to act as defender of what is most noble about the human race. Reading these poems is a life-altering experience. --Sonja James "The Journal" (1/1/2014 12:00:00 AM) Numero Cinq"" Publishers Weekly" The Journal" ZYZZYVA" "As a whole, Gillian Conoley's Peace is a compassionate and coherent plea for contemporary humanity to accept the principles of love and non-violence which guided Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Embracing an unsparing postmodern sensibility, she wages her argument for "peace" in poems that are innovative and effective. These poems ably demonstrate that the moral responsibility of the avant-garde is not only to heighten and rework our aesthetic perceptions but also to act as defender of what is most noble about the human race. Reading these poems is a life-altering experience. "--Sonja James, The Journal "Gillian Conoley's poetry collection, Peace, takes readers on a personal and political exploration of love and loss, violence and death, memory and forgiveness, and war and peace. Like current politics in America (only much more thought-out and illuminating) noisy words are everywhere in this collection: scattered across the page, strewn about in organized chaos, arranged in unpunctuated (or non-traditionally punctuated) columns, and making you think differently about the way words are used."--E. Ce Miller, Bustle "As a whole, Gillian Conoley s Peace is a compassionate and coherent plea for contemporary humanity to accept the principles of love and non-violence which guided Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Embracing an unsparing postmodern sensibility, she wages her argument for peace in poems that are innovative and effective. These poems ably demonstrate that the moral responsibility of the avant-garde is not only to heighten and rework our aesthetic perceptions but also to act as defender of what is most noble about the human race. Reading these poems is a life-altering experience. " Sonja James, The Journal" Conoley s acute historical awareness leads to a disconnection of self: [O]bsolete/ hands reaching but not reached/ and pushing glass away// more room now. Yet her deep, human concerns highlight an ethics and perspective that is both constantly articulated and continually questioned, reviewed, and revised: What are we to the man/ who attacked the gunman/ as he started to reload, a constituency? This articulation takes intelligence and humor I didn t want my eyes to be/ my reality negator and what s more is that Conoley s politicized language never buries the personal, nor her personality: [A]t my father s funeral, a blind field/ the flag taken from over the casket/ folded into a triangle, handed to us/ throughout the reception / a boy eyes a pizza slice/ on a white paper plate. Publishers Weekly" Drawing on a range of registers the geographic and technologic, emotional and workaday Conoley explores several categories of peace, broadly construed: the peace of armistice, of reflection, of liberation, of death. In her sparse, inventive lyric mode, Conoley weaves personal and political threads into an incantatory not-quite-narrative whose power lies in the gravid spaces between juxtaposed images and thoughts. It is in the emergent rhythms of each euphoriant ephemery that Peace finds its logic and, perhaps, its peace. Maggie Millner, ZYZZYVA" White space percolates this lyric, while the current lull in American military actions forms the occasion of this book, Gillian Conoley s seventh poetry collection. With poems titled late democracy, [Peace] contrary to history, and Trying to Write a Poem about Gandhi, the work pulls one way and then pushes back another, testing the inner ground for breath. A. Anupama, Numero Cinq"