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The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters book cover
The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters
1994
First Published
4.51
Average Rating
200
Number of Pages
Lyn Hejinian writes of The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in This is a most remarkable and wonderful book, reinventing the genre of "letters by mothers" and extending it into a brilliant social mediation on the unpredictability and unboundedness of the responsibility we experience as desire. The work is precise, expansive, unabashed, melancholic, forthright, and metaphysical; it is about public and private history, good advice, speculation, news, and the ways understanding and adventure direct our attention and stimulate our manifold desire. "Bernadette" (the one in the book) is at any given point precisely and descriptively somewhere, and yet she is also everywhere; the simultaneity and scale-shifting of her attention as it runs through any given sentence is amazing. And yet the power of the resulting book is logical. For "mothers," the desire to please is always a prolongation of the power to please.
Avg Rating
4.51
Number of Ratings
57
5 STARS
67%
4 STARS
23%
3 STARS
5%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads

Author

Bernadette Mayer
Bernadette Mayer
Author · 18 books

Bernadette Mayer (born May 12, 1945) is an American poet, writer, and visual artist associated with both the Language poets and the New York School. Mayer's record-keeping and use of stream-of-consciousness narrative are two trademarks of her writing, though she is also known for her work with form and mythology. In addition to the influence of her textual-visual art and journal-keeping, Mayer's poetry is widely acknowledged as some of the first to speak accurately and honestly about the experience of motherhood. Mayer edited the journal 0 TO 9 with Vito Acconci, and, until 1983, United Artists books and magazines with Lewis Warsh. Mayer taught at the New School for Social Research, where she earned her degree in 1967, and, during the 1970s, she led a number of workshops at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York. From 1980 to 1984, Mayer served as director of the Poetry Project, and her influence in the contemporary avant-garde is felt widely, with writers like Kathy Acker, Charles Bernstein, John Giorno, and Anne Waldman having sat in on her workshops. (from Wikipedia)

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