Award-winning poet Rankine, well known for her experimental multi-genre
writing, fuses the lyric, the essay, and the visual 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 clarity—of thought, and
imagination—while always 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 new 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.
“Claudia Rankine here manages an extraordinary melding of means to
effect the most articulate and moving testament to the bleak times we
live in I’ve yet seen. It’s master work in every sense, and
altogether her own.” —Robert Creeley
