What Sparks Poetry:
Vincent Toro on Language as Form
"Form is not merely shape, it’s concept. It’s not merely a concept, it is a vessel for culture that transmits the values and ways of a people....When our own forms are marginalized or entirely ignored while an oppressor culture forcefully imposes their own forms on us, some of us are going to act reflexively to such an action, and some of us are going to make it a mission to reclaim our own forms and create space for them to be appreciated and respected in equal proportion. This is, in part, the reason for my devotion to the décima." |
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Ricardo Jaramillo Reviews Phoebe Giannisi’s ChimeraIn her new book, translated by Brian Sneeden, Giannisi writes of the Vlach people, a nomadic minority from Northern Greece and the Balkans. "It is, in a sense, a 'documentary' book, scaffolded by three years of fieldwork and rigorous archival research. It is a lyric book, a book that wills to stray from itself, driven by music over sense. Most of all, it is a polyphonic book, a compilation of 53 disparate 'voices' who collaboratively meditate on the Vlachs’ goat-herding practices across time. viaLOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS |
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