Biarujia brings together for the first time long-awaited sections from out-of-print titles along with excerpts from his two recent books of poetry and new, uncollected poems in pointcounterpoint: new and selected poems 1983–2008. Widely hailed by poets and critics alike, Biarujia is one of “the most structurally challenging and innovative poets” writing today, according to American poet and critic Ethan Paquin. In “Part One: Early Books”, the reader will find poems from 1983 to 1991, starting with a long paean to love based on Xenophon’s famous shout, Thalassa Thalassa, which Oxford historian and tutor Tim Rood described in his book The Sea! The Sea! The Shout of the Ten Thousand in the Modern Imagination as “[t]he most sustained use of Xenophon’s shout as a romantic symbol in modern poetry”, and ending with an elegy for a friend who died of AIDS. “Part Two: Later Books” ranges from the highly experimental verse of Calques (2002) to the “voluptuous (of words as much as of sensations; perhaps even moreso) …, from [the] deliciously lyrical to bitterly epigrammatic” (Michael Helsem) poems of Low/Life (2003), which was short-listed for the Book of the Year prize in Australia in its year of publication. “Part Three” contains new and uncollected poems, including the winning poem of the inaugural Robert Duncan Poetry Prize, judged by Robert Kelly. Together, with the previous two Parts, they weave a fabric of points and counterpoints into the rich text(ure)s of Biarujia’s pointcounterpoint.
Table of Contents:
Part One: Early Books
From Thalassa Thalassa (1983)
“Book Four”
Eye in the Anus (1985)
Four Love Figures
“A man often recoils before the truth of himself” (Cocteau)
Cotillion Cocteau
The Coctelian Hour
From Autumn Silks (1988)
From Ra (1991)
Part Two: Later Books
From Calques (2002)
Calcutta
VLNCLL
Toxophilites Blow in the Air
The Tragedians DDT
Rama
Nisi Prius Shem About the Prima Facie
Avatar
Elagabalus
Let Om Bodhi Land
Ahimsa
From Low/Life (2003)
Louveciennes
Self-Portrait on Light
Ghost of Desire
Next to Nothing Without You
Limousin
Cartolina Illustrata
Singosari
Gunung Bromo
Borobudur
Island of Blood Island of Marrow
Low/Life
À un Javanais
From Anagoge of Fire (2004)
Kavafis sativa
MapleTROPE
HomO’Hara
Protasi–Apodosi pasoliniano
Crève-Crevel
Foucault the Diddly-oh!
“Que Sera Serrano”
Part Three: New & Uncollected Poems
Amir
Helmi
Hamid
Art of Dissuasion (III)
Commando Tidbits Make Me Amorous (Catullus)
Aphrodite
[Dé]lire
The German Consulate in Melbourne
The Bactrian Boys
Kain und Abel
[recto]
The Moloch Heap of History
Icoglan
The Warholy Grail
“active/passive” – from Obje(c)t Fou(nd)
“lingam/phallus” – from Obje(c)t Fou(nd)
Work in Progress (“Virilities”)
Endymion
Cupid
Tvashtri
Vahram
Minotaur
Hades
Being, Its Own Reward
