Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon's lyric is a painstaking inventory of the body through words interrupted, broken, and raptured. Each line is so carefully threaded through a wide range of referents, from Jimi Hendrix to the Bible to Supernovas, touching each part of our joyous and horrible existence.
— Kyle
Description
Drawing upon intersections of astronomy and mathematics, history, literature, and lived experience, the poems in Open Interval locate the self in the interval between body and name.
About the Author
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is assistant professor of English at Cornell University. She is the author of the poetry collection Black Swan, winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and coauthor, with Elizabeth Alexander, of the chapbook Poems in Conversation and a Conversation. Her poems have appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, Rattapallax, Shenandoah, and in several anthologies including Bum Rush the Page and Role Call.
Praise For…
“What joy to enter the universe Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon wills into being. In ]Open Interval[ Jimi Hendrix, Robert Hass, Rilke, Bearden, John Goodricke, Blues, Desire, Longing, Supernovas, and more are all held together with lyrical daring and fierce imagination. Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon invents a new world to reveal to us the secret workings of the old.” —Cornelius Eady
“At once luminous and fiercely heartrending.” —American Poet
“Exceptional . . . represents a quantum leap in imagination, as she has discovered that the more distance one attains from the hardened self, the clearer it becomes to the observer. Her attention has swung from the relaxed narrative line to formal perfection.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Van Clief-Stefanon continues to draw from science, history, the Bible, and autobiography to make elliptical, lovely poems.” —West Branch
