Reviews
To Tell
the Lamp
by Lisa Lubasch
Lisa Lubasch's new writing often seems wryly aphoristic but the bits of knowledge it articulates nonetheless emerge suddenly, the product not of Lubasch's wisdom but of her timing. Indeed the theme of timing is a recurrent one in To Tell the Lamp, as is apt in a book whose goal is to foresee a new "art of living," especially as that art must discover and then accept, rather than transcend, the passage of time. It is only thus that the uniqueness and transitional character of every moment, every event are made present. In this regard, as in several others, I read Lisa Lubasch's book as situationist in effect. She employs what Guy Debord calls " a technique of transient passage through varied ambiances," all voluntarily entered, and truly worth entering. I have found this book utterly exhilarating in its daring and intelligence.
--Lyn Hejinian
To Tell the Lamp offers more than "one way of redemption," inviting us to follow its hypnotic and concatenating meditations, asking us to think for ourselves about structures of time and nearness and the many ways we ready ourselves in preparation for truly reading.
--Susan Stewart
Uncertainty mars resemblance but intensifies the plain sense of things as they might be. Lisa Lubasch knows how to tell this tale from the other side of the mirror, where the lamp is still flickering and the light hovers in, around, and through a world that once we knew we'd never know and now, not knowing, circle, listening.
--Charles Bernstein