Marriage: A Sentence

Anne Waldman's new collection is a set of high-spirited poetic meditations on the delights and pitfalls of marriage in all its guises -- traditional marriages, same sex marriages, the nuclear couple in the contemporary context. Marriage: A Sentence weaves together folklore, autobiographical detail a meditation on the first five days of the marriage of famed modernist dancer Nijinsky, memory, dream, politics, and the play between opposites and dualities. The work is based on the traditional form of the "haibun, " in which a prose-like poem is coupled with a condensed lyric poem of the same theme. The overall drive in this innovative work is an impulse to restore and maintain the spiritual life of marriage in all its diverse manifestations. Lyrical and "berserk, " this is Waldman's most exciting, energetic, and accessible work yet.