The Body: An Essay

Review Boully Has Succeeded In Constructing A Fragmented, Aphoristic Work... And Her Text Seduces Its Reader... Maisonneuveboully'S Book Is...A Restless Effort, Curious And Full Of Rich Curiosities... A Courageous And Thoughtful New Voice In Literature. Versethe Body Coheres As The Book Of A Personality, Entertaining, Slightly Brittle, Prematurely Jaded, Pleasantly Brassy. The Boston Review Product Description Neither Poetry Nor Prose, But Owing To Both With A Dollop Of Essay, Creative Nonfiction And Memoir The Body Is A Surprising, Complex Study Of Selfdiscovery And Memory. At The Same Time We'Re Led Through The Speaker'S Encounters With Ethereal Ponderings Occurring In Some Heaven Or Other And The Sceneryto Where Her Death Boat Drifted, The Book Also Reexamines The Narrative Form By Completely Casting It Aside The Body Is Composed Entirely Of A Series Of Alternately Dreamy, Dark And Humorous Footnotes To A Nonexistent Text. From The Publisher Advance Praise For The Body: This Book Excites Me, With Its Wit And With Its Difference. In A Menaced Time, When Sentimental Addictions Are More Futile Than Ever, We Really Do Need Someone Smart Who Speaks Near Us. Intelligence Is The Sanctifying Grace Of Poetry; Boully'S Lets Words Find Us Again, When We Are Sick With Strategies Of Avoidance. She Works By Leading Us Ever Deeper Into The Act She Proposes, This Reading Pleasure, And There She Catches Us Reading , And Prances Round Us To Show Us Where We Are. In These Delicious Footnotes To An Elided Text, Maybe Her Greatest Achievement Is The Formal One Of Realizing That Poems Themselves Are Footnotes To An Immense Silence. Robert Kelly The Secondthought Made Brilliant. Story Shadows Essay Shadows Poem. Boully'S Aftertouch On The World Of Book Culture Is Evocative And Earthy And Light. Thalia Field In A Recent Issue Of Seneca Review Devoted To The 'Lyric Essay,' I Encountered The Body By Jenny Boully, A Prose Poem (Or So It Seemed To Me) Consisting Exclusively Of Footnotes To An Absent Text. It'S Terrific, And It Makes Me Want To Read A Lot More By This Obviously Talented Poet. David Lehman From The Author One Could Argue That I Haven'T Eliminated The Text At All, Boully Says, That The Footnotes Themselves Are The Textual Body,' But That Would Undo The Representation. The Fact Remains That There Is A Space Created Which Is Empty And Begs To Be Filled. About The Author About The Author: Jenny Boully Was Born In Korat, Thailand In 1976, To A Thai Mother And An American Father. She Grew Up In San Antonio, Texas, And Earned An Mfa In Creative Writing, With An Emphasis In Poetry, From The University Of Notre Dame. She Divides Her Time Between New York City And Castroville, Texas, Where Her Family Resides. Parts Of The Body Have Appeared In The Best American Poetry 2002 (Scribner'S), Edited By Robert Creeley, In The Anthology The Next American Essay (Graywolf, March 2003), Edited By John D'Agata, And The Anthology Great American Prose Poems (Scribners, April 2003), Edited By David Lehman.