Imaginary Income
Maureen Owen
Paper: ISBN 978-0-914610-97-7 • $9
Hard Cover: ISBN 978-0-914610-98-4 • $16
1992 • 48 pp
Publisher: Hanging Loose Press
Reviews
“Maureen Owen's strengths are obvious from the very first reading. Depth and clarity of expression, swiftness of verse, effortless, confident lyricism, honesty of emotion (not sentiment) and perception all qualify the poems of Imaginary Income. Her truth is found in the everyday, a disarming epiphany of the mundane.
—Pat Nolan review in Poetry Flash, June, 1992
Despite the occasional Exclamation Points!, the tone of this book is subdued. Other books have contained some contemplative poems, but they are more frequent in this one. Figures like the woman who may be grasping a real or illusory idea, a boy staring wistfully out of the frame of the picture where he seems to live, and many people gazing at the stars or listening to the wind or to such late-night sounds as dim tvs and passing cars, appear throughout. The grammatical subject in many of Owen's poems has been a personage called "she" -- sometimes Owen herself, sometimes someone else. In Imaginary Income, "she" makes quite a few appearances, and it is often difficult to tell whether she is Owen or not. This is a distancing device, effacing the author and emphasizing the poem. In this book, however, she sometimes takes on a mysterious quality -- if the "she" of previous books has often been the one who does most of the world's work, perhaps this "she" is the unseen one who owns so little of its property.
—Karl Young review
Praise
Like a series of small explosions. . . an energetic voice.
—Publishers Weekly
Kudos to Imaginary Income for its wit, exuberance, imagination. . . Revelation!
—Anne Waldman