Solitude and Society - by Scout Turkel (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A debut collection of poetry, Solitude and Society composes a lyric philosophy of the pleasures and problems of communal life, knowledge, nature, and love.

Solitude and Society radiates a poetics of attunement that is "gentle but not easy." Crowded with both people and ideas, these poems wander through public life in an alienated world. Turkel stages the lyric as technique, one suited for probing unanswerable questions about modernity, knowledge, nature, femininity, a poet's labor, and the dreams that visit us and choose to stay. Gracefully restrained without ever obscuring the heart, these poems keep vigil, then pucker with boldness and humor. Most of all, this subtle debut reminds us that poetry is a devotional practice of being wakeful in the world, especially when one so desperately wants to sleep and sleep.

Review Quotes

"At once disarming and formally adventurous, Solitude and Society introduces Scout Turkel as a poet of striking intelligence and emotional precision. This debut collection stands out for its refusal to settle. The poems are restless in the best sense: shifting between intimacy and abstraction, tenderness and philosophical inquiry, the domestic and the cosmic, all while charting the fragile, electric space between being alone and being with others. This is a book that thinks as deeply as it feels, and feels as sharply as it thinks: a stunning meditation on love, perception, and the conditions of consciousness itself."--Peter Gizzi

"How refreshing to read these poems of wit and grace, of genuine feeling with an arch wink, set against a web of intimacies and anxieties and bright flashes of experience, the small pleasures that fill our days. The poems in Scout Turkel's Solitude and Society--confident & expansive--craft a new way forward for us all. What a gift they are and she is.--Sara Nicholson

"Intertextual, frank, seeing. These poems speak from places of deep affection, friction, and doubt to ask how poetry might remain as vital, excessive, and mutinous as life is. Dialoging with art, history, and other beings, the poems move through uncomfortable moods in an embodied grammar of skepticism and wonder. Solitude and Society is a testament to our entanglements and efforts to think--and live--at a slant."--Hoa Nguyen

About the Author

Born in California, Scout Turkel is a poet and writer. Solitude and Society was written in western Massachusetts.