num_pages: 200
description: Touch to Affliction is a text of ruins: ruins of genre, of language, of the city, of the body, of the barbarism of the twentieth century. At once lament, accusation and elegy, this work articulates the crumbling of buildings, the evisceration of language, the inhumanity that arises from patrie.Acclaimed poet Nathalie Stephens walks among these ruins, calling out to those before her who have contemplated atrocity: Martin Buber, Henryk Górecki, Simone Weil. In the end, this work considers what we are left with – indeed, what is left of us – as both participants in and heirs to the twentieth century.Touch to Affliction is political but never polemical. It lives at the interstices of thought and the unnameable. It is a book for our times.
language: English
title: Touch To Affliction
titlecomplete: Touch To Affliction
genres: Poetry
ratings_count: 25
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Lambda Literary Award
category: Lesbian Poetry
publisher: Coach House Books