{"product_id":"information-desk-an-epic-9780143136804","title":"Information Desk: An Epic","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eNamed a 2024 Pulitzer Prize Finalist and a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review \u003c\/i\u003eEditors' Choice Pick\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Among the year's highlights . . . groundbreaking, epic . . . Like visitors exiting the Met's galleries, readers will emerge from \u003ci\u003eInformation Desk \u003c\/i\u003ebedazzled by the transformative horizons of art.\" --\u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"An\u003cb\u003e effluvial rush of memory, desire, data, and metaphor . . . It's bracing to encounter a mind so voracious, so unapologetic in its intelligence.\u003cb\u003e\" \u003c\/b\u003e--\u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA book-length poem set in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from a writer whose work offers \"something few poets ever discover: a vision of the whole world\" (Dan Chiasson, \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e) \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eRobyn Schiff's fourth collection is an ambitious book-length poem in three parts set at The Metropolitan Museum of Art's information desk, where Schiff long ago held a staff position. Elaborately mapping an interconnected route in and out of the museum through history, material, and memory, \u003ci\u003eInformation Desk: An Epic \u003c\/i\u003etakes us on an anguished soul-quest and ecstatic intellectual query to confront the violent forces that inform the museum's encyclopedic collection and the spiritual powers of art. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eNovelistic in its sweep, frantically informative, and deeply intimate in its private recollections, \u003ci\u003eInformation Desk: An Epic \u003c\/i\u003ewayfares with riveting lyric intensity through an epic array of topics and concerns, including illusion, deception, self-deception, complicity, lecherous coworkers, the composition of pigment, the scattering of seeds, ideas, and capital, and insect infestations spreading within artwork. Along the way, Schiff pauses to invoke three terrifying muses--parasitic wasps--in desperate awe of their powers of precision and generative energy. \u003ci\u003eInformation Desk: An Epic\u003c\/i\u003e undertakes a hemorrhaging ekphrastic journey through artifice and the natural world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRobyn Schiff \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of three previous poetry collections, \u003ci\u003eWorth\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eRevolver\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eA Woman of Property, \u003c\/i\u003ewhich was a finalist for the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e Book Prize. The recipient of the 2023 Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, she is a Professor at Emory University, and co-edits Canarium Books.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50593653555474,"sku":"9780143136804","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_f4218513-7c66-49a2-b94f-b5e4bc00f156.jpg?v=1732119565","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/information-desk-an-epic-9780143136804","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}