In Domain of Perfect Affection, Robin Becker explores the conditions under which we experience and resist pleasure: in beauty salon, summer camp, beach, backyard, or museum; New York or New Mexico. "The Mosaic injunction against / the graven image" inspires meditations on drawings by D_rer, Evans, Klee, Marin, and del Sarto. To the consolations of art and human intimacy, Becker brings playfulness-"Worry stole the kayaks and soured the milk"-suffused with self-knowledge: "Worry wraps her long legs / around me, promises to be mine forever." In "The New Egypt," the narrator mines her family's legacy: "From my father I learned the dignity / of exile and the fire of acquisition, / not to live in places lightly, but to plant / the self like an orange tree in the desert." Becker's shapely stanzas-couplets, tercets, quatrains, pantoum, sonnet, syllabics-subvert her colloquial diction, creating a seamless merging of subject and form. Luminous, sensual, these poems offer sharp pleasures as they argue, elegize, mourn, praise, and sing.
About the AuthorRobin Becker received the Lambda Award in Poetry for All-American Girl and has held fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard. Her books include Tiger Heron, Domain of
AwardsCommended for Lambda Literary Awards (Lesbian Poetry) 2006. Short-listed for Triangle Awards (Lesbian Poetry) 2007.
Book InformationISBN 9780822959311
Author Robin BeckerFormat Paperback
Page Count 88
Imprint University of Pittsburgh PressPublisher University of Pittsburgh Press