{"id":1340,"date":"2017-05-25T22:06:29","date_gmt":"2017-05-25T22:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/?post_type=product&#038;p=1340"},"modified":"2025-12-01T18:19:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T18:19:42","slug":"heterotopia-by-lesley-wheeler","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/product\/heterotopia-by-lesley-wheeler\/","title":{"rendered":"<em>Heterotopia<\/em>, Lesley Wheeler"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Barrow Street 2009 Prize Winner<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For philosopher Michel Foucault, \u201cheterotopia\u201d designates a real or imagined space of escape, transformation, or revelation. In Lesley Wheeler\u2019s prizewinning second collection, the heterotopia is Liverpool, England, during the middle of the twentieth century\u2014a time and place defined by the Blitz and the privations that followed. Her imaginary Liverpool, however, has a complicated relationship to the real city and to her own life in the United States: it makes visible what was gained and lost in the transition from poverty to prosperity, from oral culture to print overload.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>During a time when so many collections of verse seem tonally and formally monochromatic, it\u2019s especially refreshing to encounter a writer who works with such considerable facility in several different modes\u2014deeply felt personal lyrics, challenging sonnet sequences, and documentary-historical poems of intelligence and depth. What\u2019s more, these various concerns and approaches not only complement one another, but seem inextricably linked. <em>Heterotopia<\/em> is a collection of unusual distinction.<br \/>\n\u2014David Wojahn, contest judge<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>With acute formal awareness, Lesley Wheeler makes urgent and undeniably present the \u201csedimentary language\u201d of an inherited past\u2026 This work fuses lyrical invention with the \u201cblitzed, hungry, smoke-thin world\u201d of memory\u2014the poems richly drawn intermixtures of narrative and place.<br \/>\n\u2014Claudia Emerson<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Lesley Wheeler is the author of <em>Heathen<\/em>, <em>Voicing American Poetry<\/em>,and other books; she co-edited the anthology <em>Letters to the World<\/em> with Moira Richards and Rosemary Starace. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including <em>Poetry<\/em>, <em>Slate<\/em>, and\u00a0<em>Prairie Schooner<\/em>. She is Professor of English at Washington and Lee University and lives in Lexington, Virginia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Applicable bookseller\/retail discount on bulk orders of 10+ copies automatically applied at checkout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[20],"product_tag":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1340","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-poetry","8":"first","9":"instock","10":"shipping-taxable","11":"purchasable","12":"product-type-simple"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/1340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=1340"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=1340"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=1340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}