Voyager (New California Poetry): Volume 31 (New California Poetry, 31, Band 31) - Softcover

Reddy, Srikanth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520268857 ISBN 13: 9780520268852

Verlag: University of California Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Srikanth Reddy’s second book of poetry probes this world’s cosmological relation to the plurality of all possible worlds. Drawing its name from the spacecraft currently departing our solar system on an embassy to the beyond, Voyager unfolds as three books within a book and culminates in a chilling Dantean allegory of leadership and its failure in the cause of humanity. At the heart of this volume lies the historical figure of Kurt Waldheim—Secretary-General of the U.N. from 1972-81 and former intelligence officer in Hitler’s Wehrmacht—who once served as a spokesman for humanity while remaining silent about his role in the collective atrocities of our era. Resurrecting this complex figure, Reddy’s universal voyager explores the garden of forking paths hidden within every totalizing dream of identity.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Srikanth Reddy is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Chicago and the author of a previous collection of poetry, Facts for Visitors.

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"Srikanth Reddy's Voyager unwinds at a hypnotic pace, as inexorable as a set of philosophic propositions, yet also strangely porous, like poetry. Gradually we come to understand words spoken by Escher in the poem, 'formal objectivity / might be / a personal matter,' but by then it's too late: we're hooked. It's is a work unlike any other, deeply moving, disturbing, and ultimately fulfilling."—John Ashbery

"In 'erasing'—three times, and in an astonishing variety of poetic styles and verse forms—In the Eye of the Storm, the memoir of Kurt Waldheim, the noted Secretary-General of the UN who, after a decade in office was exposed as having been a Nazi SS officer, Srikanth Reddy has produced one of the great political poems of our time. Using, abusing, recycling, and reformatting Waldheim's own words, Voyager does what no "original" history poem could do: it exposes 'Waldheim's Disease' as much more than one individual's particular mendacity. Read it and weep—but also marvel at Reddy's bravura performance!"—Marjorie Perloff, author of The Vienna Paradox

"Our greatest task (all imaginative) is to rid ourselves of the disastrous twentieth century by finding one single gift we can salvage from it. It is the task that Reddy sets himself in this strange, beautiful meditation on Voyager 2, and World War 2. The secret hope is hidden as if in a cloud of stars."—Fanny Howe, author of The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation

Aus dem Klappentext

"Srikanth Reddy's Voyager unwinds at a hypnotic pace, as inexorable as a set of philosophic propositions, yet also strangely porous, like poetry. Gradually we come to understand words spoken by Escher in the poem, 'formal objectivity / might be / a personal matter,' but by then it's too late: we're hooked. It's is a work unlike any other, deeply moving, disturbing, and ultimately fulfilling." John Ashbery

"In 'erasing' three times, and in an astonishing variety of poetic styles and verse forms In the Eye of the Storm, the memoir of Kurt Waldheim, the noted Secretary-General of the UN who, after a decade in office was exposed as having been a Nazi SS officer, Srikanth Reddy has produced one of the great political poems of our time. Using, abusing, recycling, and reformatting Waldheim's own words, Voyager does what no "original" history poem could do: it exposes 'Waldheim's Disease' as much more than one individual's particular mendacity. Read it and weep but also marvel at Reddy's bravura performance!" Marjorie Perloff, author of The Vienna Paradox

"Our greatest task (all imaginative) is to rid ourselves of the disastrous twentieth century by finding one single gift we can salvage from it. It is the task that Reddy sets himself in this strange, beautiful meditation on Voyager 2, and World War 2. The secret hope is hidden as if in a cloud of stars." Fanny Howe, author of The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation

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Voyager

By Srikanth Reddy

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 2011 The Regents of the University of California
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-520-26885-2

Contents

Book One, 1, 
Book Two, 17, 
Book Three, 35, 
Epilogues, 117, 
Acknowledgments, 129, 

CHAPTER 1

    The world is the world.
    To deny it is to break with reason.
    Nevertheless it would be reasonable to question the affair.
    The speaker studies the world to determine the extent of his troubles.
    He studies the night overhead.
    He says therefore.
    He says venerable art.
    To believe in the world, a person has to quiet thinking.
    The dead do not cease in the grave.
    The world is water falling on a stone.

    Some serve the state.
    Some an interminable kingdom.
    In the end he would have no objection to the study of nations.
    Nations occur.
    For a time, Finland.
    Likewise, Namibia.
    The Namibian people journey through the story of Namibia.
    As a footnote, the Soviet Union is an interesting case.
    He also will one day collapse.
    A world is a world is a world.

    Even so the world has to go on.
    To complain about love in front of the famous Chagall window does not
    make a difference.
    He shall be placed in the first circle.
    The Chinese province of Sichuan continues to change form.
    Subject the globe to assembly.
    Mark in the empire thus.
    [Figure 1].
    In his mind he views a dark glass sea.
    Before diving in he talks of dialectical space.
    Jerusalem. Jerusalem indeed.

    Is is.
    There is no distinction between ideology and image.
    One.
    He records his name on a gold medallion.
    Two.
    The philosopher must say is.
    The world is legion.
    The self is a suffering form.
    Is is.
    Waves rise and fall, but the sea remains.

    Open the box.
    No.
    The box is a brief history of post-war Europe.
    Opening it would be against the interests of the authorities.
    They could bring influence to bear on a man.
    De facto world.
    Black palace.
    One would not wish this account to become a catalogue of the
    disappeared.
    Disappearance should not fashion books.
    Aldo Moro found in the boot of a parked car is the great private work of
    nations.

    If there is a story, it is this.
    He had a professorship at the university and had been out of contact with
    his personality as a result.
    His parting words made mention of the dark work of fact.
    Fact is the script of the unknown.
    Its shadowy disclosure documents the further world.
    And was he some obscure thwarted figure in byzantine constraints?
    The question arose.
    He knew the topography of injustice.
    It had neither inside nor outside, like love.
    Like a long ago fire in the world.

    War is.
    War is a failure of form.
    Thus sink each day's dead softly in the hearth.
    Some suffer within flagrant circles.
    Some take refuge in the avenues of the cross.
    He was seeking an interpretation of arms and the man that would not
    further legitimize the regime.
    Autumn was in pieces all across America.
    Death may be a change of style, but surely not of substance.
    There there.
    The river lives in a mobile home.

    Is desire present throughout the line?
    Yes she said.
    He said the final object is the cross.
    Is the world one muted figure cut down with hands tied?
    Carry out the bodies.
    The body in the line means little.
    Weigh voice.
    Namibia Namibia Namibia Namibia.
    Within seeds, increase.
    Within uncertainty, understanding.

    The failed idea repeatedly described in this book is alter ego.
    On the shield, endless ranges beyond an agricultural field, and an observer
    there, regarding it all in perspective.
    Peace. Peace.
    One.
    The sovereign subject thinking of time reasons accordingly.
    One. One. Two. One.
    Constraint fathers compulsion.
    Do the dead work beyond sense?
    Say creature into the mirror.
    If the image displeases, the remedy does not lie in shattering the mirror.

    On stage, the Cold War.
    To the west, the canal moving through the corridors of a burning former
    capital.
    Critics should take into account the function of repetition in disciplined
    states of mind.
    Peace. Peace.
    Picture the deep sea bed.
    Is the sea crafted by the will to believe?
    The enlightened believe.
    They live together in a village in history.
    Seven. Six. Five.
    The flames continued until a world appeared.

    He wrote formally in private.
    Vote for a.
    Make wings of straw.
    Vote for the.
    Everybody say servant in the cross.
    Thanks be to the university research professor for diplomacy.
    Is is a number?
    Enter one.
    Österreich ist eine kleine Welt, in der die...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of California Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520268857
• ISBN 13: 9780520268852
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 142
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar