Elisa Gabbert’s L’Heure Bleue, or the Judy Poems, goes inside the mind of Judy, one of three characters in Wallace Shawn’s The Designated Mourner, a play about the dissolution of a marriage in the midst of political revolution. In these poems, Gabbert imagines a back story and an emotional life for Judy beyond and outside the play. Written in a voice that is at once intellectual and unselfconscious, these poems create a character study of a many-layered woman reflected in solitude, while engaging with larger questions of memory, identity, desire, surveillance, and fear.
 

Praise for The Self Unstable

The most intelligent and most intriguing thing I’ve read in a while, moving between lyric poetry, aphorism, and memoir, and with thoughts worth stealing on just about every page.

—Teju Cole, New Yorker, A Best Book of 2013

On page after page, we receive stirring insights that frequently possess the power of aphorism; time and again, the book proves illuminating. These poems awaken our curiosities regarding the human life and its possibility for holding any real purpose.

—Melinda Wilson, Coldfront, A Top 10 Poetry Books of 2013 

Incredibly sleek book of poetry or words assembled poetically . . . offering a sharp bit of wisdom that also does the work of leaving you a bit unsettled. Highly recommended.

—Roxane Gay

With its textual, formal, and genre instabilities, The Self Unstable offers a taste of vivid incomprehensibility.

—Daniel Pritchard, Critical Flame

It is a very good thing that these are very good thoughts, because they are not seemly ones in seemly forms.

—Ray McDaniel, Constant Critic

I ate The Self Unstable like popcorn. I even had the guilt at the end. I ate it too fast. 

—Darcie Dennigan, H_NGM_N