And Not to Break - (Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize) by Janet Sylvester (Paperback)

About the Book

"At the core of this elegantly crafted book is a riveting cautionary tale about heartbreak, disaffection, and visceral family dysfunction that soars to agonizing life as a result of the poet's precise and startling language. Set against a largely dystopic landscape of 'bursting gamma rays, rogue asteroids...and latent nuclear fiascos,' AND NOT TO BREAK is chock-full of 'weird surprises' and unpredictable syntactical energy. Beware, most of all, Sylvester's exhilarating hyphenated adjectives that pack a psychological and intellectual wallop.--Peter Covino"--From back cove

Book Synopsis

Poetry. Italian American Studies. Women's Studies. At the core of this elegantly crafted book is a riveting cautionary tale about heartbreak, disaffection, and visceral family dysfunction that soars to agonizing life as a result of the poet's precise and startling language. Set against a largely dystopic landscape of 'bursting gamma rays, rogue asteroids...and latent nuclear fiascos, ' AND NOT TO BREAK is chock-full of 'weird surprises' and unpredictable syntactical energy. Beware, most of all, Sylvester's exhilarating hyphenated adjectives that pack a psychological and intellectual wallop.--Peter Covin

Review Quotes

At the core of this elegantly crafted book is a riveting cautionary tale about heartbreak, disaffection, and visceral family dysfunction that soars to agonizing life as a result of the poet's precise and startling language. Set against a largely dystopic landscape of "bursting gamma rays, rogue asteroids ... and latent nuclear fiascos," And Not to Break is chock-full of "weird surprises" and unpredictable syntactical energy. Beware, most of all, Sylvester's exhilarating hyphenated adjectives that pack a psychological and intellectual wallop.

--Peter Covino, Distinguished Judge

This book is a sustained triumph: unique and refulgent and lasting. Twenty-three years have passed since we readers held a new book of poems by Janet Sylvester in our hands. But now, at last, her poems--measured, whimsical, complex, cured by sorrow and challenge: they show the clarity that comes from living and honing words over time.

--Spencer Reece

Even in their softer, behind the scenes moments, the poems in And Not To Break contain images so exquisitely sharp that reading them is like driving into that onslaught of light the sky serves up just before sunset. Janet Sylvester's expert administration of her craft, paired with her crackling intelligence, make for poems in which time feels suspended as one's breath appears in winter air, as "sidewalks are meringues of ice. / Snow rosettes adhere to branches then, bursting, / drift to air. Clouds, amethyst and gray, stir." Equal parts requiem and celebration, this beautiful book moves us through those rooms of the past in which our many selves are shed. And Not to Break is a remarkable achievement.

--Cate Marvin