Anamnesis: A Poem, Slope Editions

Anamnesis is a book-length poem that incorporates the process of revision into its progression. Beginning with the statement, "We can write.," the poem explores the possibility of poetic narrative as constructed from statements linked not to forward-tending narration, but rather dedicated to the eventual substitution, reformation, or even crossing out of earlier lines. In Anamnesis, the forward movement of writing or telling is accomplished only by correction, in other words, by return. If such corrections finally become demonstrative in their own right, it is because the accrual of fragments forms a kind of narrative of the author's life:I am ten years old and my father's face turns inside its hat and collarAcross a ski slopeThe trees are black in snowIt muffles everythingCross this outWrite, "I jumped off a wall when I was six"Write, "I fell on the blade of an ice skate"Cross this outI was nineDriven by doubt in the effectiveness of linguistic description as we normally know it, Anamnesis is a poem about recollection-though it is also concerned with the Platonic origin of the title word and with the possibility of knowledge that may inhere even in a state of unknowing.

Born in New York City, Lucy Ives is a graduate of Harvard University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her poems and criticism have appeared in The Colorado Review, Fence, Ploughshares, Verse, n+1 online, among other journals, and she is the author of a chapbook, My Thousand Novel (Cosa Nostra Editions, 2008). Currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at NYU, she lives in Bushwick with her husband, Ben Gocker, with whom she runs the reading series Poetry Time.