More Sonnets from the Portuguese
Author(s):
Janet C.M. Eldred
Book summary:
More Sonnets from the Portuguese is a sonnet novella that chronicles one year in the life of Zélia Nunes, a widow in her mid-40s. When Zélia receives an email from an ex-lover, her powerful inner longings threaten long-held traditions of Azorean-American and Azorean life. Capturing the essence of a very visible culture, Silicon Valley, and a mostly invisible one, the San Joaquin Valley, More Sonnets from the Portuguese is familiar and exotic.
Publication year:
2016
Publisher:
Whitepoint Press
Award(s):
Al Smith Artist Fellowship
Praise:
Quote:
"In More Sonnets from the Portuguese, an internet connection rekindles an affair of twenty years earlier...The delightful playfulness of Eldred's language enhances her sonnet cycle chronicling how this cyber-love both blesses and tortures the lonely hours of Zelia's widowhood--an archetypal story charmingly recast in 21st-century terms."
Credit:
Jill Allyn Rosser, Professor of English at Ohio University and author of Mimi's Trapeze
Quote:
"Many writers capture the pleasures of young love, but Janet Eldred shocks us with the voltage of late life's passions. The sonnets unravel the intricate, densely woven cables through which the memories of passion move--moments of loss, skin, longing, compromise, duty--across the falsely secure networks of virtual reconnection. This is a volume so intimate and wise it needs to be read in solitude."
Credit:
Teresa Mangum, Professor of Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at University of Iowa and author of Married, Middlebrow and Militant
Quote:
"More sonnets from the Portuguese is an ambitious sonnet sequence, given its marriage of the religion and the carnal and its strong parallels to Browning's acclaimed book Sonnets from the Portuguese. Eldred's sonnets are varied and skillful and her ability to maintain a narrative in lyric form is admirable. Her use of playful language and the role she gives to technology brig a freshness to a classic story line."
Credit:
Nancy Chen Long, National Endowment of the Arts creative-writing fellow and author of Light Into Bodies
Quote:
“More Sonnets from the Portuguese tells a poignant and powerful tale about passion suppressed, rekindled, and magnified through years of deep longing and restraint. Elizabeth Barrett Browning would surely applaud.”
Credit:
Lillian Faderman, Professor Emeritus at California State University Fresno and author of Naked in the Promised Land
Bio:
Photo:
Short bio:
Janet C.M. Eldred grew up in California’s San Joaquin Valley. She is currently Professor of English at the University of Kentucky where she teaches creative nonfiction, poetry, and literature in the English Department. She is the author of four books, including Sentimental Attachments (Heinemann, 2005), a volume of creative nonfiction; and Literate Zeal (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012; 2014), a look into the editing practices and editorial secrets of The New Yorker magazine. She is a recipient of an Al Smith Artist Fellowship from the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
A&S department affiliation:
Book URL:
https://www.amazon.com/More-Sonnets-Portuguese-Janet-Eldred/dp/1944856064/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1544808275&sr=8-1&keywords=more+sonnets+from+the+portuguese
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