Transcript of the Disappearance, Exact and Diminishing: Poems

by Lynn Emanuel

A Poetic Autobiography—Intimate, Sorrowful, and Funny

Lynn Emanuel’s sixth collection of poetry is not sequential or straightforward. It has no conventional chronology, no master narrative. Instead, it is a life story, with all the chaos and messiness entailed therein. T ranscript of the Disappearance, Exact and Diminishing is a commotion of grief and wit, audacious images, poems, and paragraphs. It explores and centers on the possibilities and limitations of art in the face of disappearances of many kinds, including the disappearance that is most personal—the poet’s own. 

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

Published September 12, 2023

Reviews

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know how she does it. Lynn Emanuel's diction, to borrow from her subtitle, is exact but not diminishing - it's brilliant. I am humbled by her poems, her persona sophisticated and well-traveled but rooted in blood and skin and substance. To read her "diary" poems is to appreciate the details and the struggles of each day. To read about her depression and her dry observations on "The flotsam and jetsam of//My Life" is to cheer for her survival. As a character in a noir movie or a lonely pedestrian in an empty city in the midst of a pandemic, Emanuel's voice is edgy, and fascinating.