Title: With Apologies to Mick Jagger,
Other Gods, and All Women
Author: Jane Rosenberg LaForge
Publisher: Aldrich Press (August 27, 2012)
Copyright: 2012
Pages: 72
ISBN: 978-0615677002
Synopsis: Like, as LaForge writes
"the calculated wreckage through mirrors and poetry," there is a
beauty and gruesomeness here that speaks boldly to all that listen. These poems
are tightly woven, evocative portraits. And you will take notice, because there
is a certain religious quality at work. A worship of words and schemas, a
concise arc of time and evolution, each poem the body and the blood, a feeling
of knowing that LaForge has a plan in mind for you. ~ Lisa Marie Basile
Jane Rosenberg LaForge's poems read like a catalogue of the
curious. She creates not one but many worlds with deft language , stark images
and a wide, gaping eye. Nothing is off limits as these poems tackle Putin,
ankles, youth, teeth, Jagger, old age, sisterhood and other delights and
vagaries of the living and the dead. Part mythology and fable, part prayer and
dirge , part telescopic and up close and personal, these magnificent poems
resonate, throb, and fairly hum with the the fascinating details of the way
lives are lived. ~ Michelle Reale, author of four chapbook collections, and
two-time Pushcart Prize nominee.
Synopsis Continued:
"With
Apologies to Mick Jagger, Other Gods, and All Women'' is a
contemplation
of hero worship, a phase of life, if not a life-long practice, that everyone experiences.
Hero worship can take the form of the unreasonable yet inevitable yearnings of
a teenage girl for her untouchable rock 'n' roll deities, or the respect she feels
for the more important and
accessible
goddesses--her relatives and other acquaintances--as she
matures.
That first form of hero worship is "limbic, if not
automatic/the
adrenalin of the instant/in front of rapt attention/
in
front of girls,in front/of the opportunity to be/remembered
forever,
as/if the ancestors have all/been jettisoned and worship/is
all
about the present,'' as the opening poem, "Rock Star Watching,''
states.
The
other form is learned, if not more thoughtful; it is borne out of
the
disappointment that aging and memory propagate: "the sum of the
universes
in their/bloating and motion, the friction that
substitutes;/some
day even my memory will deteriorate,'' as described
in
the poem "To An Accomplished Ceramicist.'' The content of this kind
of
hard-won admiration is an "improbable origami of time
and/proportions,
where cats and thought/experiments confirm our
basic/ignorance....,''
as the poem, "My Sister's Face,'' states. By
recounting
the different men she has longed for, and women she has
known,
the poet sorts through the characteristics and qualities that
encompass
what we consider godly in a time after myths and legends.
The
small and the small writ improbably large are what constitutes
fame
today, for such are the contents of "Facebook Status," a poem and
a
report about the day's musings. The book concludes with "What
Remains:'' “Where there is not a broken heart / but a
muscle rendered
blunt
/ into a numb instrument / there is a daughter.”
Author
Biography:
Contact Information:
Contact Information:
151
West 17th Street #5H
New
York, NY 10011
212-974-1025
felixina@gmail.com
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Jane Rosenberg LaForge was born and
raised in Los Angeles. She earned her bachelor’s degree at UCLA and worked as a
newspaper reporter in California, Maryland, and upstate New York before
attending graduate school.
She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree
at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she was a Delaney Fellow.
She also worked as a research assistant to writer-in-residence Jay Neugeboren
on two of his books on the health care system, Transforming Madness and Open
Heart.
In addition to publishing poetry, short
stories, and personal essays, she is the author of three critical studies of
African American literature: "Colson Whitehead: The Final Frontier,''
which appeared in Paradoxa; “Slavery’s Forgotten Legacy: James Baldwin and the
Search for White Identity” on New York University’s Virtual Commons web site;
and “The Civil Death of Mrs. Hedges and the Dilemma of Double Consciousness” in
The Western Journal of Black Studies.
Her two chapbooks of poetry are After
Voices (2009) from Burning River of Cleveland; and Half-Life (2010) from Big
Table Publishing Co. of Boston. She has been nominated for a Story South
Million Writers Award; and twice for a Pushcart Prize, once for fiction and
once for poetry. Her next work will be The Navigation of Loss, one of three
winners in Red Ochre Press’ 2012 chapbook competition.
She lives in New York with her husband,
Patrick, an editor at The New York Times; their daughter, Eva; and Eva’s cat,
Zeka.
Reviews: The
review which appeared in Boston Literary Magazine reads as follows:
With Apologies to Mick Jagger, Other Gods and All Women
by Jane Rosenberg
LaForge
Aldrich Press
We remember not with our anatomy,
but with our impulses; A precious
curtsy, the last cigarette, the grind
of ashes into wine and sand.
~ “Metaphor/Moth”
With a title like that, you expect sexy, steamy sass. At
least I
did—I’ve been a fan of Jane Rosenberg LaForge for a few
years, and
know her to be a mistress of imagery, insight and beautiful
mindfulness. But I wasn’t prepared for this melancholy
LaForge, this
voice of sorrow, of bittersweet looking back. From poignant
memories
of her parents, to watching her sister die, LaForge paints a
breathtaking picture of life’s Entirety with scenes that
swing from a
hygiene-challenged lover to a slumber party to her own
profile on
Facebook. Uh huh, it’s all here, and no, it’s not all pretty.
But for
me, the final powerful line says it all: “Where there is not
a broken
heart / but a muscle rendered blunt / into a numb instrument
/ there
is a daughter.” With Apologies is an explosion of emotions,
both
grisly and exquisite.
The
review which appeared in philart.net, known for its unusual
reviews,
reads as follows:
With Apologies to Mick Jagger, Other Gods, and All Women
Jane Rosenberg LaForge
Aldrich Press
I cannot lock my front door in the morning without testing it
at least
three times, because of my OCD, each time with a different
hand
position, incantation or dance. Otherwise, because of my
senility, all
the mornings of the last twenty plus years I have lived in
this house
merge together, and after walking a block and a half, arguing
with
myself, over whether I remember, I lose, and walk back to try
again.
Nor can I leave without a 226 Press or Philadelphia Union
cap, because
of my light sensitivity. And even with the hat, after all the
handle
rattlings, mumbled obscenities and shuffling jigs, I have to
wait on
the sidewalk, visually parsing the street because of my
schizophrenia,
until all the colored lines and polygons assert themselves as
rowhouses, stores, trees, badly parked cars, and commuters
waiting for
the buses in various stages of age and distress. Reading this
excellent book of poems constructed from grammatical
sentences was
like walking straight out of the house to the corner, my head
bare,
the front door probably open behind me. The structure is English,
the
route across and down the page simple and expected, but the
words, the
nouns especially, are twice removed from normal, the people
are
intemporal, I am uneasily convinced there is something
between the
words I have forgotten that needs checking, and I am
squinting as I
read. "It is youth that keeps you pale and concerned
about the smaller
buzzing parts, the soil and the pinecones there, and the
grace between
fists and teacups."
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