Book record
Hunger in Plain View
Ester Naomi Perquin
Translated from Dutch by David Colmer
Hunger in Plain View, by Ester Naomi Perquin and translated by David Colmer, carries a title that feels almost too direct until one sits with it. Hunger here can be bodily, emotional, civic, or moral; plain view suggests not secrecy but the difficulty of noticing what is already before us. Perquin’s poems, at least as this English-language volume frames them, seem drawn toward vulnerability without making vulnerability decorative. I would read this book for its attention to social life: the self among others, the ordinary scene under ethical weather, the small want that turns out not to be small at all. Colmer’s translation keeps the poems clear enough to enter, but not so clear that they stop troubling the air around them.
- Published
- 2017
- Publisher
- White Pine Press
- Language
- Dutch
- Country
- Netherlands
- ISBN
- 9781945680052