Ledger
The many meanings of "economy" are the ground for the meditation and lament of Ledger, Susan Wheeler's fourth book. In its Greek origins, economy referred to the stewardship of a household and, as it developed, the word also came to include aspects of government and of religious faith. Ledger places an individual's crisis of spirituality and personal stewardship, or management of her resources, against a backdrop of a culture that has focused its "economy" on financial gain and has misspent its own tangible and intangible resources.
"Susan Wheeler is an exuberant, subtle, endlessly inventive original, and Ledger marks a wonderful advance in her already vital contribution to American poetry. Best of all in Ledger's varied pleasures is 'The Debtor in the Convex Mirror,' an intricate splendor and triumphant fusion of technique and vision." - Harold Bloom
"Part narrative, part satire, part cri de coeur, Susan Wheeler's densely wrought new poems are alternately hilarious and chilling in their power to evoke the terrible contradictions of daily life in our media-driven landscape. Wheeler is that rare thing among poets, a genuine cultural critic; her poems use image and allusion with such exactitude that we see the things around us-from pop tarts to polyvinylled toilet seats-as if for the first time. Ledger is a dazzling collection." - Marjorie Perloff
"If Baudelaire was, for Walter Benjamin, the lyric poet of the era of high capitalism, Susan Wheeler is a lyric poet for an era of superstores, global corporations, and product tie-ins. A ledger is a measure of accounts, and Wheelerís Ledger assesses the place of value in a market-driven world where indebtedness has replaced belief and logos have replaced Logos. Her poems draw on a wealth of sources--from 17th century religious poetry and Flemish painting to contemporary consumerism--in an effort to define our tenancy to rich lords and concurrent losses to the human heart." - Michael Davidson