Path, crooked path / John Balaban.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Balaban, John, 1943-

Language:

English

Physical Description:

viii, 77 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Port Townsend, Wash. : Copper Canyon Press, [2006]

Summary:

Guided by an acute moral urgency, John Balaban's fifth book of poems, Path, Crooked Path, opens on Highway 61 and keeps moving across America and throughout the ancient and modern worlds. Juxtaposing his experiences in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia against contemporary life in the United States, two-time National Book Award nominee Balaban illuminates the hypocrisy and humor that often percolate when individuals are thrust into the mix of cultures. In poems about picking up a hitchhiker, sitting at a cafe in Vietnam, and trading swigs of vodka with a Bulgarian exile-or through his translations of classical and contemporary poets-Balaban helps us make sense of a chaotic world.

Contents:

Highway 61 revisited

Looking out from the Acropolis, 1989

Georgi Borrisov in Paris

Some dogs of the world

On the death of his dog, Apples

The lives of the poets

Romania, Romania

Ovid, Tristia V.x:15-22

The siege

Ibn Fadhlan, the Arab emissary, encounters vikings on the Volga River, A.D. 922

Loving Graham Greene

A vision

Soldier home

Let him be

Waiting in a desert canyon

Poor sap

Sotol

Root boy slim

If only

Leaving

Head-to-toe

Miami suite

A note to Hayden Carruth from Miami

Butter people

Some notes on Miami

Eddie

Dinner in Miami

Big boy

After hurricane Andrew

Remembering Miami

Anna Alhmatova spends the night on Miami Beach

A little story

Varna Snow

Van Gogh

Dr. Alice Magheru's room

Driving back east with my dad

The goodbyes

The great fugue.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

1556592388

OCLC:

61361619