دانلود کتاب By the Numbers: Poems and Aphorisms

"Faces are motion, which is why all the photos of you are bad. Even the most natural-looking portrait is a sentence interrupted, one note of an aria, held. Though faces themselves hide a deeper motion. You seem to sit there and meet my eyes across the table, but you are so many other places, clinging here for a moment against all the currents that will soon sweep you onward. We are so moved by the faces caught in the windows of trains going the other way because they tell us how all faces really are."

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For some time now, James Richardson has been reinventing the art of the aphorism in what he terms “vectors” or “ten-second essays,” imbuing such short forms with wit, grace, and dynamism. Collected in recent books, Vectors: Aphorisms & Ten-Second Essays (2001), Interglacial: New and Selected Poems & Aphorisms (2004), and By the Numbers (2010), Richardson’s short forms, as well as his lyrics, work their way into our psyches and stay there, partly due to their concision, but mainly because they possess such alertness to our human condition—both its unwavering qualities and its vicissitudes. In his most recent collection, During, Richardson continues his calibration of form, exploring a range of subject matter from personal loss to climate change. In the end, During constitutes a profound meditation on what it means to live here now and the question of what endures.

In his note on the book’s title, Richardson writes, in his characteristically playful-but-serious style: “I like prepositions, even without objects. And this one shares roots with durable, endure, duration, duress” (99). Thus, the collection weaves together pressing matters of duress or difficulty with questions of futurity, creating a web of association just light enough to hold us as we take in its depths. Take the opening poem, the lyric address “To the Next Centuries,” for instance. Eschewing platitude or foregone conclusion, Richardson frames this poem, and the collection as a whole, as a series of suggestively interrelated questions, and thereby employs the speculative quality of his poetics to focus our attention in a compelling way."

"For James Richardson, poetry is serious and speculative play for both intellect and imagination. By the Numbers is striking for its range of line and movement, for its microlyrics, crypto-quatrains, "ten second essays," and the twist and snap of its aphorisms. Drawing from myriad fables—Ovidian, Shakespearean, georgic and scientific—Richardson makes familiar scenes strange enough to provoke new and startling insights."

"Richardson’s poems and aphorisms weave paradox, humor, concision, and a nuanced understanding of human engagement. In a starred review of By the Numbers, a Publishers Weekly reviewer notes, “In his poems, Richardson speaks with a world-weary voice that is also at times cautiously optimistic, managing to view the world from intimately personal and omniscient vantage points at the same time.”"

National Book Award FinalistBook of the Year honors fromPublishers Weekly"As if hurled from a pitching mound, James Richardson's aphorisms and images approach the reader like fastballs, only to curve at the last second, painting the corners of the reader's mind with wisdom and delight. In By the Numbers Richardson dips into an expansive repertoire of approaches and shows excellent command, as he illuminates the commute between the ordinary and the mystical." National Book Award finalist, Judges' Citation[O]ne of America s most distinctive contemporary poets- a powerful and moving body of work that in its intimacy and philosophical naturalism is unique in contemporary American poetry.Boston ReviewJames Richardson sInterglacial,a poetry finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, is like a beautiful river, under the thin surface of which rushes an intensely felt life and a never quite lost yearning to belong.NewPagesJames Richardson's poetry is unusual, quirky, personal, and profound.The Threepenny ReviewJames Richardson is a poet who earned his reputation as a master of imagery and concision.The Christian Science MonitorJames Richardsonis the author of six books of poetry and two critical studies. His poems appear frequently inThe New Yorker, Slate,andParis Review.He is a professor of English and creative writing at Princeton University."