Pocket
Sundial
Lisa Zeidner
The Brittingham Prize in Poetry
Ronald Wallace, General Editor
In this, the fourth volume to win the Brittingham
Prize in Poetry, Lisa Zeidner's twenty-two poems introduce
a surprising range of characters, from a cryogenically preserved
caveman to a 78-year-old widow arrested for shoplifting. Some
of the narratives collected here are unusually long (like "Dementia
Colander," a mock-epic about the history of an unnamed nation
whose king suffers a rare disease). These poems attempt to offer
not just poetic moments, glimpses of joy or loss, but a sense
of self in time and history—whole lives in all of their
busy-ness and disorder. Lisa Zeidner's dark wit considers any
subject, from the Holocaust to child abuse, a subject for intellectual
playfulness and emotional discovery.
Despite the range of subjects, the poems
in Pocket Sundial are bound by a concern for time, for
how we think about time. These are poems about memory, foresight,
anticipation, regret—all of chronology's complexities.
Lisa Zeidner is associate professor of English at Rutgers University in Camden,
where she teaches writing and literature. Her first book of poems, Talking Cure, was published by Texas Tech Press in 1982.
She has also written two novels, Customs and Alexandra
Freed, both published by Alfred A. Knopf.
Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.)
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Fall 1988
LC: 88-040196 PS
104 pp. 6 x 9
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