The Unraveling - by Wyn Cooper (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Each of the poems in the book describes an unraveling of one kind or another: of a marriage, of a society trapped by a pandemic, of a country and a world coming undone.

Sometimes whimsical, sometimes bereft, but always honest, these poems are compressed, language-centered testaments to the difficulties of life in our time, not just here in the U.S. but wherever "the weathervane spins in uneasy wind." These poems traverse the world, from Boston to Mississippi, from Scotland to France to Tuscany and beyond, to "distant places no planes fly to."

There's an urgency to these poems, not only in how they depict both inner and outer worlds, but in how they're constructed--not a word is wasted, and the most urgent of these lyrics appear to rush across and down the page, their lines enjambed, their interior rhymes almost riddles, as if by rhyming they might find answers in repetition. Many of the poems are centered on human relationships both distant and close, on romantic love and how it can unexpectedly unravel, "the smell of your perfume still in the air."

In the end, the real center of these poems is emotional truth, as it applies to individuals and to the population at large, and how that truth can make or break us. There's darkness here--how could there not be on a planet dissolving before our eyes--but there's also hope that humans can come together again to piece together the broken world.

Review Quotes

Praise for The Unraveling:

"In this brilliant, wrenching book, Wyn Cooper shows himself again a master of an off-center lyric: what seems familiar in his method, as in the world, shifts suddenly, grows uncanny. It's personal, but it's not. The prevailing theme is a persistent melancholia whose source is obvious and yet mysterious: "Something silent floats among us," one poem tells us, which might be "spleen, and grace, and grief-- / what thoughts point toward." Cooper is uniquely attuned to our inexplicable discontents. "It is not convenient to work on feelings scientifically," Freud wrote. The inconvenience vexes us. That's why we have poetry."--T.R. Hummer

"Wyn Cooper's The Unraveling opens with 'I Trust the Wind and Don't Know Why, ' which says pretty much all we need to know about the mystery of faith--or faith in mystery. These are poems of engagement and attachment, of wisdom and bafflement. With arresting restraint, Cooper interrogates intimacy and distance--how hard it is to know the self, and others. These poems are a masterful and haunting catalogue of how we navigate--churning forward and looking back--with the memory of perfumes, with "false compasses," with the "velour clutch filled with grievances" we might never let go of."--Andrea Cohen

The Unraveling is an apocalyptic travelogue of haunting snapshots and metaphysical espionage, with each sly dossier full of 'umlauts and the imperative mood, / idioms and assonance and bitter pills.' Like Donald Justice, Cooper is a wizard at mapping loss and psychic exile investigating the glimmering topography of 'fingerprints on windows / that look out on rain, ' or tracking fictional ships on wine-dark seas--no matter how much these twilight séances cost him."--Simeon Berry

"'Are you crossing the bridge, or lighting it on fire?' Wyn Cooper's The Unraveling asks us. If you answer I don't know, read this book. If you answer both, stop what you're doing, and read it while you can. Either way, Cooper wastes no words as his poetry investigates the kinds of changing circumstances no one is spared. If you've ever been 'to an island/of pain in a sea/of indifference' or felt in danger of falling apart, this book will take you in, search along with you, and offer you a means to survive. --Dara Barrois/Dixon

Praise for Wyn Cooper:

"These quiet, clean, sharp-edged poems are populated with dangerous characters, dangerous mostly to themselves, 'who just want to have a little fun, ' or be loved. Wyn Cooper's poems are tight and pithy and fun."--James Tate

"A wise practitioner of the horizontal lyric--a lyric poem that does not rise, but rather spreads over surfaces, coloring them with its particular tincture of consciousness--Wyn Cooper explores an overlooked territory that lies between the crafty irony of Frank O'Hara and the more unalloyed sentiments of contemporary popular culture, discovering unexpected equivalencies and startling imbalances."--T.R. Hummer

"Wyn Cooper's poems are cold compresses for the inflamed mind. They calm and refresh with their clarity and lucidity; their music soothes and enlivens; their intelligence and their sure craft sustain us and confirm our faith in art. They are a perfect antidote for the fevers of our historical moment."--Vijay Seshadri

About the Author

Wyn Cooper has published five books of poetry prior to The Unraveling, as well as a novel, Way Out West. His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Poetry, as well as in 25 anthologies of poetry, including A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker. Many of his poems have been turned into songs, including by Sheryl Crow, David Broza, and Madison Smartt Bell. He is a former editor of Quarterly West, and the recipient of a fellowship from the Ucross Foundation. For two years he worked at the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, a think tank run by the Poetry Foundation. He lives in Vermont.