Jane

A Murder

Fiction & Literature, Poetry, American
Cover of the book Jane by Maggie Nelson, Soft Skull Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Maggie Nelson ISBN: 9781593763299
Publisher: Soft Skull Press Publication: February 10, 2005
Imprint: Soft Skull Press Language: English
Author: Maggie Nelson
ISBN: 9781593763299
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Publication: February 10, 2005
Imprint: Soft Skull Press
Language: English

Jane tells the spectral story of the life and death of Maggie Nelson’s aunt Jane, who was murdered in 1969 while a first-year law student at the University of Michigan. Though officially unsolved, Jane’s murder was apparently the third in a series of seven brutal rape-murders in the area. Nelson was born a few years after Jane’s death, and the narrative is suffused with the long shadow her murder cast over both the family and her psyche.

Jane explores the nature of this haunting incident via a collage of poetry, prose, and documentary sources, including newspapers, related "true crime" books, and fragments from Jane’s own diaries written. Each piece in Jane has its own form that serves as an important fissure, disrupting the tabloid, "page-turner" quality of the story, and eventually returning the reader to deeper questions about girlhood, empathy, identification, and the essentially unknowable aspects of another’s life and death. Part elegy, part memoir, detective story, part meditation on violence, and part conversation between the living and the dead, Jane’s powerful and disturbing subject matter, combined with its innovations in genre, expands the notion of what poetry can do-what kind of stories it can tell, and how it can tell them.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Jane tells the spectral story of the life and death of Maggie Nelson’s aunt Jane, who was murdered in 1969 while a first-year law student at the University of Michigan. Though officially unsolved, Jane’s murder was apparently the third in a series of seven brutal rape-murders in the area. Nelson was born a few years after Jane’s death, and the narrative is suffused with the long shadow her murder cast over both the family and her psyche.

Jane explores the nature of this haunting incident via a collage of poetry, prose, and documentary sources, including newspapers, related "true crime" books, and fragments from Jane’s own diaries written. Each piece in Jane has its own form that serves as an important fissure, disrupting the tabloid, "page-turner" quality of the story, and eventually returning the reader to deeper questions about girlhood, empathy, identification, and the essentially unknowable aspects of another’s life and death. Part elegy, part memoir, detective story, part meditation on violence, and part conversation between the living and the dead, Jane’s powerful and disturbing subject matter, combined with its innovations in genre, expands the notion of what poetry can do-what kind of stories it can tell, and how it can tell them.

More books from Soft Skull Press

Cover of the book Rock and Hard Places by Maggie Nelson
Cover of the book Good Indian Girls by Maggie Nelson
Cover of the book Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut by Maggie Nelson
Cover of the book One With the Tiger by Maggie Nelson
Cover of the book The Intelligent Design Coloring Book by Maggie Nelson
Cover of the book Fake Missed Connections by Maggie Nelson
Cover of the book Chicken by Maggie Nelson
Cover of the book 51/50 by Maggie Nelson
Cover of the book Something Bright, Then Holes by Maggie Nelson
Cover of the book The Job of the Wasp by Maggie Nelson
Cover of the book Pregnant Butch by Maggie Nelson
Cover of the book This Should Be Written in the Present Tense by Maggie Nelson
Cover of the book The Pure Cure by Maggie Nelson
Cover of the book Cocaina by Maggie Nelson
Cover of the book Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving by Maggie Nelson
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy