Latest Review: "Elsewhere" by Eliot Weinberger (ed.)

The latest addition to our Reviews section is by Grant Barber on Elsewhere, an anthology of poetry edited by Eliot Weinberger, and out from Open Letter Books and co-published by the Poetry Foundation.

If you’re a fan of Eliot’s essays and commentary (such as 19 Ways), a fan of poetry, or both, this is a slim volume that’s sure to please. Not only is it a quick breakdown of some of the best poets from around the world, but it also takes a different approach to understanding what it may feel like to be “other.”

Here’s the beginning of Grant’s review:

What a wonderful, idiosyncratic book Weinberger has written. I say book, but the closest comparison I could make to other works being published right now are from Sylph Edition’s “Cahiers Series“—short pamphlet-like meditations by notable writers such as Anne Carson, Elfriede Jelinek, and László Krasznahorkai among the architects, playwrights, painters, and philosophers. Weinberger certainly belongs in such company; anything he writes can be assumed to be interesting, different, intellectually engaging. The essay collections he writes—and Elsewhere can be considered to be an extended meditation/essay—puts him as well alongside Rebecca Solnit, Lawrence Weschler, Sven Birkets, and Ilan Stavans.

Elsewhere consists of poems, all in translation, by writers of the Modernist era (by Weinberger’s use here roughly 1910s-1940s) illustrating a broad sensibility that Weinberger calls the sense of being “elsewhere”. . .

For the rest of the review, go here.