The Ruined Elegance
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-16750-3 (ISBN)
In her new collection, Fiona Sze-Lorrain offers a nuanced yet dynamic vision of humanity marked by perils, surprises, and the transcendence of a "ruined elegance." Through an intercultural journey that traces lives, encounters, exiles, and memories from France, America, and Asia, the poet explores a rich array of historical and literary allusions to European masters, Asian sources, and American influences. With candor and humor, each lyrical foray is sensitive to silence and experience: "I want to honor / the invisible. I'll use the fog to see white peaches." There are haunting narratives from a World War II concentration camp, the Stalinist Terror, and a persecuted Tibet during the Cultural Revolution. There are also poems that take as their point of departure writings, paintings, sketches, photographs, and music by Gu Cheng, Giorgio Caproni, Bonnard, Hiroshige, Gao Xingjian, Kertesz, and Debussy, among others. Grounded in the sensual, these poems probe existential questionings through inspirations from nature and the impermanent earth.
Described by the Los Angeles Review of Books as "a high lyricist who refuses to resort to mere lyricism in order to articulate her experience," Sze-Lorrain renews her faith in music and poetic language by addressing the opposing aesthetics of "ruins" and "elegance," and how the experience of both defies judgment.
Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a poet, literary translator, editor, and zheng harpist. The author of two previous books of poetry in English, My Funeral Gondola and Water the Moon, she also writes and translates in French and Chinese. She lives in Paris.
I WRONG EPIC Given Silence 3 Towering 4 I Wait for the Ruined Elegance 5 Back from the Aegean Sea 6 In the Thick of It 7 Ionian Supper 9 Partita, but Nothing to Do with Bach 10 Few Days before Christmas 13 II IN A GODLESS TIME Beginning 17 Spring Massacre 18 Mausoleum 19 Backstage 20 Day Seven 21 Center of a Journey 22 Am I What the Lake Gave Me 23 Meditation 24 Dusty Citadel 25 III THE BOOK, A SIMPLER GRAVE To Whom It May Concern 29 Granted Asylum 31 Against Prologue 32 To Survive When It Must 33 Midnight Almanac 34 Yield, Please 36 Anna Akhmatova, or the Thoughts She Didn't Write 37 An Uprising Committed to Longhand 38 Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz took more than fifty years before writing Ravensbruck down in La Traversee de la nuit 39 Chosen by the Narrator 40 Cantabile (ma stonato) 41 IV CAUGHT IN DEFIANCE Transparent 45 Ink Painting from the Joseon Dynasty 46 What's Left of a Sijo 47 Chiaroscuro, 2 a.m. 48 Bonnard's Naked Wife Leaving the Bathtub 49 La Chambre d'ecoute 51 Three Moves, Clockwise 52 Om dhrung svaha 54 My Hiroshige 55 Peintre 56 Jardins sous la pluie 57 Notes 59 Acknowledgments 61
| Reihe/Serie | Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | New Jersey |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 152 x 235 mm |
| Gewicht | 255 g |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Lyrik / Gedichte |
| ISBN-10 | 0-691-16750-8 / 0691167508 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-691-16750-3 / 9780691167503 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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