OPTIC NERVE - Softcover

Janet Sternburg is a writer, poet, memoirist, playwright, filmmaker, and photographer, often called a Renaissance woman for the breadth and depth of her vision. Her books include Optic Nerve: Photopoems (Red Hen 2005) in which she integrates her photographs within her poems so they function as visual stanzas. In the prologue to Optic Nerve, poet Molly Peacock writes, "Her photopoems redefine both poetry and photography." In Phantom Limb: A Memoir (American Lives Series, University of Nebraska Press 2002), Sternburg writes a meditation in which she suggests that we all have phantom limbs--"someone no longer with us who remains a part of us." Bill Moyers has described her book as "The perfect metaphor for . . . the ultimate inevitabilities of life." Other books include The Writer on Her Work: Volumes One and Two (WW Norton and Co. 1981 and 2002, respectively), described as "groundbreaking. . . landmarks" by Poets & Writers magazine and selected for inclusion in 500 Great Books by Women. Volume one has remained continuously in print for twenty-eight years and was re-issued by W. W. Norton in a twentieth anniversary edition. She has just finished My Zombies: A Family Memoir, the second volume of the trilogy begun with Phantom Limb.

Janet Sternburg s lyrics are indeed of optic nerve as well as of poetic tact and verbal finesse. These carefully wrought poems are the perfect analogues to Sternburg s superb photographs . . . . Whether practicing ekphrasis, as in Natura Morta or reanimating the love lyric and memory poem, Sternburg maintains an exquisite poise. --Marjorie Perloff

[Janet Sternburg s] photopoems open up new ideas of metaphor, redefining both poetry and photography . . . --Molly Peacock, from her prologue to Optic Nerve