Overview

Poetry that centers its movement on repetition—orbiting, unwinding, and returning. Integrating Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, and the works of other poets, this collection explores narrative through abstraction and considers how repetition holds both the power to constrain and to generate. Freud explains how what we repress—what we know but don't want to acknowledge—reappears in our actions through repetition. Through slips of the tongue or selective memory, we engage with what our unconscious knows, finding knowledge through unknowing. The psychoanalytic session is centered on bringing forth repressed knowledge through acts of unknowing—speaking without thinking—which brings one closer to recognizing an obscured desire. The poetry of Sweet Repetition works in ways akin to the psychoanalytic act. These pulsing poems follow the definitions of the word revolution—to revolve, change direction, unroll, unwind, happen again, repeat, orbit around. Images and words reappear in the motion of Cynthia Cruz's poems, inviting us into their revolutionary, political, and cumulative effects.

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9780226843766

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Reviews

“Expertly employing her distinct, unsentimental voice, Cruz’s poems dwell in the bittersweet and often heartbreaking liminality of dreaming and memory, where ‘the movement / Of always leaving and returning’ is most acutely felt. I can’t imagine a reader who will not recognize the sensation of encountering in their own lucid but elusive dreamscape or remembrance a childhood or place of origin, ‘a lifetime of cities away,’ ‘warped but beautiful.’ Sweet Repetition is a prime example of the possibilities of lyric poetry.”  -- Rosa Alcalá, author of ""YOU""

Author Information

Cynthia Cruz is the author of eight books of poetry, two works of nonfiction, and one novel. Her collection Hotel Oblivion was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award, and is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow for Poetry. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the European Graduate School.  

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