In Update on the Descent, Ellen Hinsey draws on personal experience and family tragedy to forge a masterful meditation on the extremes of the human condition. A poet who situates herself in a landscape steeped in the tragic history and artistic splendor of Europe, Hinsey suffuses her work with the urgency of historical memory. Alternating lyrics, aphorism, anti-lyrics, and philosophical notebooks, she explores the nature of terror, war, tyranny, and violence as well as reconciliation and renewal of the human spirit. Called by Carolyn Forche, "A true poet, whose sense of line, cadence, and tonality is unsurpassed among poets of her generation," Hinsey brilliantly contributes to the tradition of poetry as a witness to history.
"Ellen Hinsey has manifested a range of concern and a sensitivity to larger human issues which is the sine qua nonof authentic poetry. She has found a way to be both truthful and original, to make poems which are absorbing and enlightening, historically pertinent and philosophically urgent. . . . To our great good fortune they succeed in their unlikely ambitions." --C. K. Williams
"With this book, Ellen Hinsey confirms her status as one of the most profound and intense poets of her generation. Update on the Descentis arranged in an extremely sophisticated pattern, alternating Dantean visions, contemporary accounts of torture, and thoughts on our human condition which crystallize into formulae possessing all the depth and darkness of Heraclitus. It has the touch of strangeness indispensable for any great poetry, but its moral message is straightforward and full of inner force." --Tomas Venclova, author of Winter Dialogue and The Junction: Selected Poems
"In this meditation on the vita activa, Hinsey journeys poetically and philosophically through the ruins of what it means to be human in the twenty-first century. Human nature is this lyric art's first-person, and its utterance is protean. Throughout we hear the cris de coeur of our time, from a scaffold of collective memory artfully constructed by one of our most compelling poets. Hinsey's sense of line, cadence, and tonality is remarkable, and she deserves a serious and attentive readership in this country." --Carolyn Forche

Update on the Descent

Literature & Fiction

Hinsey, Ellen

History & Criticism

University of Notre Dame Press

Cities of Memory (Yale Series of Younger Poets)

Poems set in European cities including Rome, Berlin, Budapest, and Vienna evoke the ambience of places that have experienced violence and sorrow amidst their artistic splendor

Poetry

Yale University Press

Poems set in European cities including Rome, Berlin, Budapest, and Vienna evoke the ambience of places that have experienced violence and sorrow amidst their artistic splendor

A stunning new work by a profound poetic talent.

The White Fire of Time

Wesleyan University Press

In this exquisitely coherent new collection of poems, Ellen Hinsey explores the boundary between poetry and metaphysics, and the intimate bonds between morality and mortality. Drawing on philosophical and spiritual readings, The White Fire of Time displays a breadth of cultural knowledge and a deep understanding of the wisdom of the body. The poems in this book-length sequence are gorgeous, brooding, musical, elegant and serious. The work is composed in three sections: The World, meditations on the ordinary, the daily life of the body and its place in nature and time; The Temple, investigations into language and the ethical life; and The Celestial Ladder, in which poems trace the soul's spiraling journey through desire, love, grief and endurance. Each section mirrors the structure of the whole, with poems following specific forms, serving to create a symphonic rhythm in which details, metaphors and meanings build and interweave.

The White Fire of Time (Wesleyan Poetry)

Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova is a book in the European tradition of works such as Conversations with Czeslaw Milosz and Aleksander Wat's classic My Century. The book interweaves Eastern European postwar history, dissidence, and literature. Venclova, who personally knew Akhmatova, Pasternak, Milosz, Brodsky, and many others, was also one of the five founding members of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group. Magnetic North provides an in-depth account of ethical choices and artistic resistance to totalitarianism over a half century. It also details Venclova's artistic work, expanding our understanding of the significance of this writer, whose books are central to contemporary European culture.

Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova (Rochester Studies in East and Central Europe, 17) (Volume 17)

Biographies & Memoirs

Venclova, Tomas

Arts & Literature

University of Rochester Press

Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova is a book in the European tradition of works such as Conversations with Czeslaw Milosz and Aleksander Wat's classic My Century. Taking the form of an extended interview with Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova, the book interweaves Eastern European postwar history, dissidence, and literature. Venclova, who personally knew Akhmatova, Pasternak, Milosz, Brodsky, and many others, was also one of the five founding members of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group, one of the first human rights organizations in Eastern Europe. Magnetic North provides an in-depth account of ethical choices and artistic resistance to totalitarianism over a half century. It also details Venclova's artistic work, expanding our understanding of the significance of this writer, whose books are central to contemporary European culture. The publication of this book was supported by the Lithuanian Culture Institute. Tomas Venclova is a Lithuanian poet, writer, scholar, and translator. He is Professor Emeritus of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. Ellen Hinsey is the author of numerous works of poetry, essay, and literary translation. Her most recent book is Mastering the Past: Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe and the Rise of Illiberalism.

Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova (Rochester Studies in East and Central Europe, 17)

Ellen Hinsey's new collection, Update on the Descent is a powerful meditation on violence, war and human division, drawing on personal and family experiences-including the murder of her grandmother-as well as research at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Dynamically and innovatively written in lyrical and anti-lyrical forms, including prose and aphorism, Update on the Descent is a masterwork, an exploration of the extremes of the human condition, tackling issues of civil strife and tyranny, reconciliation and the renewal of the spirit.

Bloodaxe Books Ltd.

The Illegal Age

Review\nThe Illegal Age is a volume of prophesy as much as poetry. [...] Its sections move from laconic proverbial observation to tragedy and so enable us to recognise that the two share the same urgent field. 
George Szirtes Ellen Hinsey's remarkable new book moves in fugal segues from narrative to lyric, from the ghetto to the gulags to today's disintegrating polis, in dialogue with Celan, Szymborska, Milosz. This is a daring text - for its political acuity, and for its demonstration of the power in poetry to recount, remember, move the heart while opening the mind. 
Marilyn Hacker\nEllen Hinsey's new book-length sequence, The Illegal Age, is a powerful investigation into the twentieth-century's dark legacy of totalitarianism and the rise of political illegality. It explores the enduring potential for human beings to set neighbour against neighbour and commit final acts of violence. A book of lyrical reflection and prophesy, The Illegal Age chronicles the arrival of a new, disquieting reality unfolding in our midst. 
As Marilyn Hacker has written, "In dialogue with Celan, Szymborska, Milosz... this is a daring text - for its political acuity, and for its demonstration of the power in poetry to recount, remember, move the heart while opening the mind." 
Written in parallel with her first-hand research into the rise of authoritarianism carried out over the last decade, Hinsey's volume warns that - rather than an "Age of Anxiety" - we may indeed be facing the start of the "Illegal Age".

Arc Publications

Ellen Hinsey's new book-length sequence, The Illegal Age, is a powerful investigation into the twentieth-century's dark legacy of totalitarianism and the rise of political illegality. It explores the enduring potential for human beings to set neighbour against neighbour and commit final acts of violence. A book of lyrical reflection and prophesy, The Illegal Age chronicles the arrival of a new, disquieting reality unfolding in our midst. As Marilyn Hacker has written, "In dialogue with Celan, Szymborska, Milosz... this is a daring text - for its political acuity, and for its demonstration of the power in poetry to recount, remember, move the heart while opening the mind." Written in parallel with her first-hand research into the rise of authoritarianism carried out over the last decade, Hinsey's volume warns that - rather than an "Age of Anxiety" - we may indeed be facing the start of the "Illegal Age".

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hinsey, Ellen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hinsey, Ellen

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hinsey, Ellen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Update on the Descent

Cities of Memory (Yale Series of Younger Poets)

Cities of Memory (Yale Series of Younger Poets)

The White Fire of Time

The White Fire of Time (Wesleyan Poetry)

Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova (Rochester Studies in East and Central Europe, 17) (Volume 17)

Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova (Rochester Studies in East and Central Europe, 17)

Update on the Descent

The Illegal Age

The Illegal Age