Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric

Written by Claudia Rankine

Narrated by Janina Edwards

I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recognition that a life can not matter.

The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric and the essay in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America. With wit and intelligence, Rankine strives toward an unprecedented clarity-of thought, imagination, and sentence-making-while arguing that recognition of others is the only salvation for ourselves, our art, and our government.

Don't Let Me Be Lonely is an important confrontation with our culture, with a voice at its heart bewildered by its inadequacy in the face of race riots, terrorist attacks, medicated depression, and the antagonism of the television that won't leave us alone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Nov 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781696606738

Claudia Rankine

Award-winning poet, critic and activist Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric and she edits the "American Poets in the Twenty-First Century" series. Rankine is the recipient of the fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacArthur Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and the Guggenheim Foundation and more. Her work has garnered attention from media such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Boston Globe and the New Yorker. She is the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University.

Reviews for Don't Let Me Be Lonely

[Sandra Zuks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a snapshot of living in America pre & post 9/11 leading to the Gulf War. It is a personal reflection of the writers life. Her experience with grief , loneliness, everyday observations, and conversations. It flows with its own rhythm & vibrates with poignancy. It expresses both the isolation and powerlessness of the individual impacted by the society that surrounds them & also the individuality of that person's experience.