Nine Alexandrias: New Poems, Vol. 56
Translated from the Bosnian with an introduction by Ammiel Alcalay\ Following his depiction of Bosnia under siege in the much celebrated Sarajevo Blues, Semezdin Mehmedinovic´ now explores the vast space of his new continent. Mostly written in response to a cross-country journey by train in post 9-11 America, Mehmedinovic´’s Nine Alexandrias provides a poetry of witness and testimony of a very different order. In this nightmarish and exhilarating odyssey, Mehmedinovic´’s political acuity is...
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New poems from the highly acclaimed author of Sarajevo Blues.Julianna Thibodeaux - Nuvo.netMehmedinovic s prose is not self-righteous or sentimental; instead, it s direct and makes its points with observation and attendant remarks.
Translator's PrefaceNine Alexandrias3Sufism4Pound5Prison Crowd6East and West7Functions of the Heart8JFK9Iceberg10Reading Method11Myth and Text12Sign of the Times13Red Boulder14Arcosanti15Flag16Moorish Fountain17After Spicer18Hotel Room19Fountain20Journey Into the Cosmos21KGB22Open Dialogue23Mormon Archive24Mist25An Essay on Tattoos26Precautionary Manifesto27New Art28A Question of Copyright29For the Sorrow of a Continent30Out of the Rainy Zone31A Door Upright in the Wind32I'll describe myself, my life and that means ...35It's already five years I've been tracking ...36In one of those parking lots in McLean ...37In the garden of a restaurant a reddish colored ...38Desolate February morning, I stumble ...39I stop brooding as soon as I ...40I never had a house of my own ...41We had to stop and turn back ...42Ramona and I fold sheets ...43This town's political, and we're nowhere to be found ...44I'll never forget the woman ...45An expert on bird-calls ...46I only saw the little African chimp ...47Yes, I used to hang out with some ...48While I'm reading my stuff about the war ...49I don't bear the sorrow of a people within me ...50I always answer differently when it comes to the question ...51At the fish market on the Potomac I think of my ...52The sun went down right ...54In dreams the colors are more intense ...57First Cadillac was eternal ...57"Cadillac grows in ice," Burroughs says ...58It's no accident tears reveal the very nature ...58In a world created was a result of the ...59I never saw Cadillac in a war zone ...59The novelist writes a poem on Cadillac ...60Looking from east to west, the ...60
\ Nuvo.netMehmedinovic¹s prose is not self-righteous or sentimental; instead, it¹s direct and makes its points with observation and attendant remarks.\ —Julianna Thibodeaux\ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyIt consists of three sequences; two of them while purposefully understated, are as good as anything published in English this year... Alcalay's English never feels forced or rushed, and his very acute introduction articulates the book's underlying conceit perfectly.\ \ \ Publishers WeeklyIn 1996, Mehmedinovic, then a Sarajevo-based poet and dissident originally from Bosnia, emigrated to the U.S. as a political refugee. His third book, Sarajevo Blues, was published in 1998 by City Lights, also with translations by Alcalay (From the Warring Factions). Now in his early 40s, Mehmedinovic offers this fourth collection, completed in 2001. It consists of three sequences; two of them, while purposefully understated, are as good as anything published in English this year. The title series of short lyrics opens, imagining "at least nine cities in America called Alexandria" (his is the one outside of Washington D.C. in Virginia) and how one might "mov[e] from one/ American Alexandria to another,/ On the same Egyptian dock" as the poet and poems cross the country. The terrific "This Door Is Not an Exit," written in slowed-down, sometimes fragmentary couplets, reflects on exile in the aftermath of violence, death and continued political insolubility: "I am, in fact, where you are, to make/ your weariness inspire meaning." The final sequence, "8 Things About Cadillac," takes in everything from the ironies of a luxury car named for a destroyed people (and that now drives over their land), to the fact that "The longest lasting Cadillac in memory/ Is the one JFK is dying in." Alcalay's English never feels forced or rushed, and his very acute introduction articulates the book's underlying conceit perfectly: "Mehmedinovic's narrator holds the pulse to the real by protecting us from what he has seen and known in another life.... a very different kind of witness" that "transports us to an America we haven't yet known but must be prepared to recognize." Readers will find their various Alexandrias among the many geographical muses here. (Nov.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.\ \
