Reviews for The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience

The average rating for The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-04-02 00:00:00 Rob Tzakis SO good. Changed how I think about poetry, art, the academy, the world (political/cultural/et al), and how all of those interact. She's a kind of female W.G. Sebald, except a bit different -- instead of interpolating grainy, processed, & hauntingly beautiful pictures, as Sebald does, she inserts quotes from texts of all kinds - literary, poetic, philosophical, criticism, theory, etc. Read this (!), and pay special attention to her essays on Emerson and the six "Night Sky" sequences.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-01-04 00:00:00 Mike Bauer It should come as no surprise that the muscularity Lauterbach brings to her prose is considerable -- having read a good amount of her poetry prior to reading this collection of her prose, I was already somewhat familiar with hey prodigious skills with the manipulation and coercion of langueg. What I was less prepared for was an all-out display of her incredible intellect, as well as a wealth of references she draws from in even the most humble essay. The central piece in this text is the 7-part titular essay, which attempts (among other things) to answer some of the following questions: What is art good for? Why do our choices matter? Do artists (and specifically poets) truly benefit society? The result is a long winding soliloquy of the highest nature, that I found myself eager to become lost in, and far less eager to finish. Other stand-outs include her touching piece "Remembering Joe Brainard" (one of his collages appears of the cover), various introductions given to contemporary writers (Fanny Howe, Rosemarie Waldrop, Whitman and Emerson), and a chilling and vivid portayal of 9/11, among others. In each, the language is pitch-perfect and soaring in its rigor -- it's almost impossible not to become excited by her prose. This is one I'm going to have to read and re-read for many years to come.