Nine Alexandrias : New Poems

by Mehmedinovic, Semezdin

• ISBN13: 9780872864238
• ISBN10: 0872864235
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-09-01
• Publisher: Consortium Book Sales & Dist

Summary

Translated from the Bosnian with an introduction by Ammiel Alcalay Following his depiction of Bosnia under siege in the much celebrated Sarajevo Blues, Semezdin MehmedinovicA' 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, MehmedinovicA''s Nine Alexandrias provides a poetry of witness and testimony of a very different order. In this nightmarish and exhilarating odyssey, MehmedinovicA''s political acuity is displayed everywhere but barely pronounced. In Washington, D.C., his new home, the graphic and tactile affirmation of life amidst horror depicted so masterfully in Sarajevo Blues, turns into an eerie silence that permeates both the expanse of the land and the heart of the American empire. Praise for Semezdin MehmedinovicA''s Sarajevo Blues: "A memorable literary achievement."-Library Journal "Sarajevo Blues is widely considered here to be the best piece of writing to emerge from the besieged capital since Bosnia's war erupted in April 1992."-The Washington Post "In poems, micro-essays, and prose vignettes, Semezdin MehmedinovicA' charts the collapse of a world with clear-eyed passion for the truth that one finds in the young Hemingway, the Hemingway of In Our Time."-Paul Auster Semezdin MehmedinovicA' was born in Tuzla, Bosnia in 1960 and is the author of five books. MehmedinovicA' -arrived in the U.S. as a political refugee in 1996, and he is currently living in Alexandria, Virginia.

Table of Contents

Translator's Preface	p. xi
Nine Alexandrias
Nine Alexandrias	p. 3
Sufism	p. 4
Pound	p. 5
Prison Crowd	p. 6
East and West	p. 7
Functions of the Heart	p. 8
JFK	p. 9
Iceberg	p. 10
Reading Method	p. 11
Myth and Text	p. 12
Sign of the Times	p. 13
Red Boulder	p. 14
Arcosanti	p. 15
Flag	p. 16
Moorish Fountain	p. 17
After Spicer	p. 18
Hotel Room	p. 19
Fountain	p. 20
Journey Into the Cosmos	p. 21
KGB	p. 22
Open Dialogue	p. 23
Mormon Archive	p. 24
Mist	p. 25
An Essay on Tattoos	p. 26
Precautionary Manifesto	p. 27
New Art	p. 28
A Question of Copyright	p. 29
For the Sorrow of a Continent	p. 30
Out of the Rainy Zone	p. 31
A Door Upright in the Wind	p. 32
This Door is Not an Exit
I'll describe myself, my life and that means	p. 35
It's already five years I've been tracking	p. 36
In one of those parking lots in McLean	p. 37
In the garden of a restaurant a reddish colored	p. 38
Desolate February morning, I stumble	p. 39
I stop brooding as soon as I	p. 40
I never had a house of my own	p. 41
We had to stop and turn back	p. 42
Ramona and I fold sheets	p. 43
This town's political, and we're nowhere to be found	p. 44
I'll never forget the woman	p. 45
An expert on bird-calls	p. 46
I only saw the little African chimp	p. 47
Yes, I used to hang out with some	p. 48
While I'm reading my stuff about the war	p. 49
I don't bear the sorrow of a people within me	p. 50
I always answer differently when it comes to the question	p. 51
At the fish market on the Potomac I think of my	p. 52
The sun went down right	p. 54
8 Things about Cadillac
In dreams the colors are more intense	p. 57
First Cadillac was eternal	p. 57
"Cadillac grows in ice," Burroughs says	p. 58
It's no accident tears reveal the very nature	p. 58
In a world created as a result of the	p. 59
I never saw Cadillac in a war zone	p. 59
The novelist writes a poem on Cadillac	p. 60
Looking from east to west, the	p. 60
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