At a time darkened by war, Ellen Hinsey’s The Invisible Fugue returns to questions of our endurance and what it means to be human. Like Czeslaw Milosz’s Treatise on Poetry, The Invisible Fugue lyrically reflects on the natural world around us, the possible celebration in the encounter with the other, our confrontation with time and the mysteries ever-present in the universe.
Ellen Hinsey is the author of nine books of poetry, essays, dialogue, and literary translation. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Illegal Age, explores the rise of authoritarianism. Hinsey’s first-hand essays on dangers to democracy are collected in Mastering the Past: Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe and the Rise of Illiberalism. Hinsey’s other books include Update on the Descent, The White Fire of Time, and Cities of Memory. Her work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review and Poetry.
“Ellen Hinsey’s mind bears witness to an unprecedented ability to never abandon poetry, even when approaching the extreme limits of the darkness of our time. In this Invisible Fugue, following step by step the movement of Beethoven’s ‘Große Fuge’ Op.133, her poetry ventures into a new, ecstatic dimension, where, ‘released from the black chaos of the unmanifest, ‘ the earth appears as if in the splendor of the first day, beyond all possible destruction.” – Giorgio Agamben
“There’s an omniscient beauty and wisdom in the intrepid music Ellen Hinsey distills from natural wonder, from spiritual anguish and bewilderment. With roots in Beethoven’s most radical, futuristic composition, the Gro-ße Fuge, Hinsey’s The Invisible Fugue…compels as both existential quest and far-reaching cosmic aria. After her previous volume, The Illegal Age, which confronted the chilling unraveling of democracy in our imperiled era, these new ‘mystical lyrics’ (a decade in the making) arrive as a gust of splendid lyricism…The timeless poise and elegance of Hinsey’s profound and sibylline project, enhanced by her masterly command of cadence and lineation-artfully crafted in the face of carnage, fear, spiritual outcry, and earthly chaos-is unmatched by any other English language poet writing today.” – Cyrus Cassells, author of The World That the Shooter Left Us
“If a Fugue is something you hear, what is The Invisible Fugue of Ellen Hinsey’s? It is a sourceless source, and this mystery-an ‘unlikely coming into being’-is what animates the lyrics of this collection. I’ve read Hinsey’s work for years, and every time the language and form feel constitutional, something upon which to be made, or unmade. The Invisible Fugue is no different: Hinsey looks for ‘the fixed point of the unexpected’ and manages to hold a tone both urgent and unhurried; fugitive and full of feeling; filled with knowing and filled beyond knowing.” – Pádraig Ó Tuama, host of Poetry Unbound
“Ellen Hinsey’s poetry balances between a deep engagement with the socio-political world and a rich inner realm. This collection stands out for its distinct mysticism-yet remains non-religious-characterized by its restrained poetic diction, minimalism, and musical elegance. It’s a stylized, empathetic lyricism of artful gesture…A masterful fugue of the via negativa.”- Jaroslaw Pluciennik, author of The Courage of Poetics
“A fugue, etymologically rendered, is flight….I simply note the uniqueness of this revelatory volume, written in the wildly inventive (because impossible) idiom of mystical lyrics. The song of praise there is no leap of faith; it is ‘unwilled devotion’ to a generosity that defies finality of vision. This is spirituality for a heart-breaking age.”-James Wetzel, author of Parting Knowledge
“Ellen Hinsey’s poetry balances between a deep engagement with the socio-political world and a rich inner realm. This collection stands out for its distinct mysticism—yet remains non-religious—characterized by its restrained poetic diction, minimalism, and musical elegance. A masterful fugue of the via negativa.” – Jarosław Płuciennik, author of The Courage of Poetics
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