The Fabulous Beasts - by Joyce Carol Oates (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This collection of fifty-two poems from the author of Angel Fire and Anonymous Sins explores the annihilation of the time-bound ego, a liberating, sometimes terrifying experience for all who live within the "fabulous beast" of history and nature. The poems explore the shifting, elusive point at which the inwardness of individual experience touches upon the larger consciousness of a species or an era, forming a connection with a "self" that goes beyond subjectivity.

The poems are grouped into four parts: "Broken Connections," "Forbidden Testimonies," "The Child-Martyr" and "A Posthumous Sketch," are prose poems which, though technically different from the others, are concerned with the same theme--the relationship between the individual and a larger, all-inclusive whole. Neither fatalistic nor rebellious, the poems convey the idea that as long as we live in time we must struggle, and that is this struggle that determines our humanity.

About the Author

Joyce Carol Oates is the several books, including The Poisoned Kiss, The Seduction and Other Stories, and The Assassins. Her novel Them won the National Book Award in 1970, and her collection of short stories, Lovely, Dark, Deep, was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Oates has also received the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Lifetime Achievement in American Literature.