The Odicy
Will be published approx. on 1. October 2011
Book
Paperback/Softback
88 pages
978-1-890650-52-0 (ISBN)
Description
The Odicy, Cyrus Console's second book, uses pentameter in an attempt to take the measure of our epoch's cultural and ecological crises. Tracking a mysterious central character named Tony, the book combines the end-time rhetoric of contemporary fundamentalism with meditations on artificial color and the rise of fountain drinks, revisiting Dante's animus for the counterfeiter upon the purveyors of NutraSweet. It attempts to come to terms with social continua on which sugar substitutes are manufactured by pharmaceutical giants, or where weaponized defoliants like Agent Orange evolve into bestselling agrichemicals like Roundup. Console's English is straight out of 21st century Topeka, while his deployment of canonical meter posits the sustainability of verseform over a longer human term.
Reviews / Votes
"'The Ophany' stands out as a poem which immediately establishes its importance." -- Colin MacCabe, Critical Quarterly "Rich with the drama of a mind doing its best work of understanding the self coming into being." -- American Poet: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets "Some of the most distinguished prose poetry written so far in the United States." -- Michel Delville, author, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics , on Brief Under Water "If you want new poets who speak to ... history, who critique and confront it, then you will want Cyrus Console's majestic, aggressive, disturbing second book, The Odicy ... It is (as the pun in the title suggests) a broken-up, inside-out, postmodern epic journey, a fractured, frustrated attempt to discover justice, or purpose, or divinity, in our day." --Stephen Burt, San Francisco Chronicle (July 17, 2011) "Very old methods and very new American speech collide, strike sparks, and end up burning brightly indeed in this shockingly memorable book-length sequence, the second volume from Console." -- Publishers Weekly (July 25, 2011)More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Richmond, CA
United States
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-890650-52-0 (9781890650520)
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Schweitzer Classification