A Pillow Book

A Pillow Book

Written by: Buffam, Suzanne

Not a narrative. Not an essay. Not a shopping list. Not a song. Not a diary. Not an etiquette manual. Not a confession. Not a prayer. Not a secret letter sent through the silent Palace hallways before dawn. Making a daybook of oblivion, A Pillow Book leads the reader on a darkly comic tour through the dim-lit valley of fitful sleep. The miscellaneous memoranda, minutiae, dreamscapes, and lists that comprise this book-length poem disclose a prismatic meditation on the price of privilege; the petty grievances of marriage, motherhood, art, and office politics; the indignities of age; and the putative properties of dreams, among other themes, set in the dead of winter in a Midwestern townhouse on the eve of the end of geohistory. Feather-light in its touch, quixotic in its turns, and resolutely deadpan in its delivery, A Pillow Book offers a twenty-first-century response to a thousand-year-old Japanese genre which resists, while slyly absorbing, all attempts to define it.

Not a narrative. Not an essay. Not a shopping list. Not a song. Not a diary. Not an etiquette manual. Not a confession. Not a prayer. Not a secret letter sent through the silent Palace hallways before dawn. Making a daybook of oblivion, A Pillow Book leads the reader on a darkly comic tour through the dim-lit valley of fitful sleep. The miscellaneous memoranda, minutiae, dreamscapes, and lists that comprise this book-length poem disclose a prismatic meditation on the price of privilege; the petty grievances of marriage, motherhood, art, and office politics; the indignities of age; and the putative properties of dreams, among other themes, set in the dead of winter in a Midwestern townhouse on the eve of the end of geohistory. Feather-light in its touch, quixotic in its turns, and resolutely deadpan in its delivery, A Pillow Book offers a twenty-first-century response to a thousand-year-old Japanese genre which resists, while slyly absorbing, all attempts to define it.

Published By House of Anansi Press Inc — Apr 9, 2016
Specifications 128 pages | 5.875 in x 8 in
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Excerpt
Written By Suzanne Buffam’s first collection of poetry, Past Imperfect, won the Gerald Lampert Award. Her second collection of poetry, The Irrationalist, was named a finalist for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize. Her work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, and Slovenian. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Chicago.
Written By
Suzanne Buffam’s first collection of poetry, Past Imperfect, won the Gerald Lampert Award. Her second collection of poetry, The Irrationalist, was named a finalist for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize. Her work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, and Slovenian. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Chicago.

“A Pillow Book is one of the most finely controlled, subtly structured books of Canadian poetry in recent memory...” —Globe and Mail

“Suzanne Buffam’s third poetry collection, A Pillow Book (House of Anansi), takes the reader into the haze-filled world of the insomniac, turning the half-muddled thoughts of sleepless-ness into irreverent, sharp and meditative poems.” —Maisonneuve

“Buffam’s pillow may not inspire sleep, but it does inspire smart, relevant writing.” —Arc Poetry Magazine