Poems that offer a science of the human.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The poems in&nbsp;Internal West&nbsp;practice a careful empiricism, offering a science of the human, a way to understand the world through watching and listening. Becker's poems are as much in the Eastern European tradition of Daniel Simko as the American tradition of George Oppen. As the poet herself has stated, her main themes are the complete truth of what her life has been; of feeling alone even in supposed relationships. &nbsp;

Internal West (Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary Poetry Series)

Literature & Fiction

Becker, Priscilla

Poetry

Carnegie-Mellon University Press

Internal West: Poems

William Ralph Pr

Priscilla Becker, whose first book of poems, Internal West, won The Paris Review Book Prize, has written an astonishingly precise second collection, Stories That Listen. These poems attempt to come to terms with absences personal and global: one speaker wonders if a former partner still uses her map which “showed the world / before it broke up into separate / continents.” Another, missing a departed friend, retraces her steps, “took a tour of your former apartments.” The recipient of a letter containing “a fraction of an ounce of Chanel Mademoiselle” attempts to understand the sender’s motives, “tried to scrape together enough dust / to fill a bowl or roll a minuscule cigarette. / I thought perhaps that this was your intent.” Stories That Listen offers a science of the human, a way to understand the world through watching closely. Becker deftly slows action down—we see fingers “curl /around my coffee cup”—to find the remarkable, the noteworthy, in the everyday. Quirky, at times outright funny, always wise, Stories That Listen is a resonant, rewarding read.

Stories That Listen (Stahlecker Selections)

Four Way Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Becker, Priscilla. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Becker, Priscilla