Jana Prikryl

Jana Prikryl's No Matter argues for the necessity of vision in a time of darkness. Set in cities toppling past the point of decline-and-fall--Rome, London, Dublin, and most of all New York--these poems capture the experience of being human in the late days of empire, when the laws protecting weak from strong are being torn away. Ranging from free verse through sonnets and invented forms, Prikryl's poems insist that every demolition also builds something new and unforeseen. In poems whose one-word titles give the book a percussive rhythm, Prikryl gives voice to the shifting anxieties and fortitude of the powerless. An ancient Sibyl is the presiding spirit, tired of being the conscience of a people addicted to ancient codes of domination. Dido gets the last word on the male lust for conquest. The American tradition of self-reliance shrivels into the narcissism of the survivalist. Scraps of Moby-Dick, Coriolanus, Virginia Woolf, and Heraclitus drift through the poems like ghosts. New York City is taken hostage by the super-rich, and a scramble for resources infects each relationship. Yet the city's glamour and importance can't be denied- there are love poems for friends, for David Bowie, for all kinds of new arrivals who make every city worth saving. In reactionary times, these poems say, we all have a responsibility to use our imagination. No Matter is an elegy for our ongoing moment, when what seemed permanent suddenly appears to be on the brink of collapse.

Poems

No Matter

Midwood - Poems

"A debut collection from a major new voice in contemporary poetry"--

The After Party

Midwood is a restless and intimate volume from a poet James Wood has called “one of the most original voices of her generation.” In her third book, Jana Prikryl probes the notion of midlife, when past and future blur in the equidistance. Balancing formal innovation with deeply personal reflection, Midwood subtly but impiously explores love and sex and marriage and motherhood in plain, urgent language. Written for the most part early every morning over the course of a year, in all its changing seasons, Midwood includes a series of poems looking at and talking to trees; Prikryl’s careful attention to the ordinary world outside the window forms an alternative measure of time that leafs and ramifies. With their rapid shifts of scale and unusual directness, these poems find a new language for confronting our moment.

Jana Prikryl

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