Description

‘Philosophy’ literally means a love of Wisdom, Sophia, a female figure, or ancient goddess. I Love Sophy charts the course of selected Western philosophy from ancient Greece to the postmodern present by engaging with the lives of twenty famous philosophers, all male.

Through the lyrical lens of poetry, these philosophers come to life in all their everydayness: sensuous, cantankerous, ironic, tragic—all-to-human, and sometimes downright comical. We encounter their philosophies, with all their quirks, abstractions, evasions, internal conflicts, and wisdom.

And all this is told in explicit and implicit counterpoint to their various often troubled relations, or lack of relations, with women and nature. As philosophers, they all ‘love Sophy’, yet for the most part she seems either despised, hidden, or strangely absent.

‘Comedic, deliciously mordant, this taut work calls to mind certain paradoxes: it is encyclopaedic and whittled, erudite and witty. Each canto is a jewel of ‘memoir’ replete with the philosopher’s idiosyncrasies, and comic anachronisms from Lach-Newinsky, a poet at the top of his game.’ —Anna Kerdijk Nicholson

‘Witty, wise, humorous. As we dive into these lively reclamations of famous thinkers, planted like difficult flowers, we realize their thoughts make us think. And through it all, Lach-Newinsky is our intelligent and bemused tour guide, leading the way.’ —Susan Hampton

Peter Lach-Newinsky is the author of four published poetry books and three poetry chapbooks. He has won the Varuna-Picaro Publishing Prize; the Melbourne Poets Union International Poetry Prize, twice; the Vera Newsom Poetry Prize; and has been twice shortlisted in the Newcastle Poetry Prize. He runs a twenty-acre permaculture farm with 120 heritage apple trees near Bundanoon, on Gundungurra country in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. He blogs at memengineering (at peterlachnewinsky.wordpress.com) and his translations from the German can be found at Passing on the Flame (at peterln.wordpress.com).

Product details
ISBN: 978-0-6459294-1-6
Published: 27 September 2024
Pages: 67
Cover: paperback
Weight: 148 grams
Dimensions: 135mm (w) x 197mm (h) x 7mm thick
Printed & bound in Australia

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I Love Sophy sample pages