Arc Tangent is composed of two prose-poem sequences, "Arc Tangent" and "Table of Primaries", hybrid works made up of prose, poetry and fragments collaged from a working notebook, and occasionally using appropriated text. Both pieces show evidence of Selland's deep roots in the American Modernist tradition and his lifelong experience with the language and poetry of Japan. His writing is dense, allusive, philosophically informed, and combines the surprise and formal interest of collage with a striking unity of tone, a haibun-like lyricism, and a powerful engagement with issues of displacement, exile and "at-home-ness". "Eric Selland's lyric work possesses a poise and nuance reminiscent of the French symbolist vision of Japonisme, wherein the slightest brushstroke or flute-breath causes the entire universe to veer. This is writing that moves along the verge of the unsayable, enacting a deep study of the mystery of everyday life" (Andrew Joron). "Arc Tangent's exquisite collage challenges our perception like a delicate puzzle whose truths intersect, changing as they move through the present moment, yet fitting together perfectly even as they pass. Your hand finds comfort turning these pages, image disappears into question then reappears profoundly unanswered, as sound submerges amid clear water" (Colleen Lookingbill).
Sprache
Produkt-Hinweis
Broschur/Paperback
Klebebindung
Illustrationen
Maße
Höhe: 216 mm
Breite: 140 mm
Dicke: 4 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-4-907359-01-0 (9784907359010)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Eric Selland is an American poet and translator living in Tokyo. He is the author of six books or pamphlets of poetry, including Object States (Theenk Books, 2018), Beethoven's Dream (Isobar Press, 2015), and Arc Tangent (Isobar Press, 2013). His translation of The Guest Cat, a novel by Takashi Hiraide, was on the New York Times bestseller list in early 2014, and his translation of poems by Kiwao Nomura, The Day Laid Bare, was chosen as a Recommended Translation by The Poetry Book Society, UK, for their winter 2020 season. His most recently published book-length poetry translation is of Minoru Yoshioka's late-modernist masterpiece Kusudama (Isobar Press, 2021). Selland has co-edited an anthology of twentieth-century Japanese experimental poetry with poet and translator Sawako Nakayasu, which is scheduled to appear from New Directions Books in 2024. He makes his living as an independent translator of Japanese economic research reports.
