Facts for Visitors

by Reddy, Srikanth

• ISBN13: 9780520240445
• ISBN10: 0520240448
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Speaking in the wake of empire, of terrestrial love and of the collapse of traditional literary forms, the protagonist of this collection of poetry reconstructs a world from the language of encyclopedias, instruction manuals, and the literary legacies of Wallace Stevens, W. G. Sebald, and Joseph Conrad. The prefatory lyric, "Burial Practice," imagines the posthumous narrative of "then's" that follows an individual's extinction; in the poem "Aria," a stagehand steps onto the floorboards to wax poetic after the curtain has dropped on an opera; and the extended sequence of "Circle" poems obliquely revisits Dante's ethical landscape of the afterlife. Many of these poems were written while Srikanth Reddy worked for a rural literacy program in the south of India, a fact reflected in the imagined postcolonial world of lyrics such as "Monsoon Eclogue" and "Thieves' Market." Yet the collection moves beyond the identity politics and ressentiment of postcolonial and Asian-American writings by addressing the fugitive dreams of shared experience in poems such as "Fundamentals of Esperanto." Mobilizing traditional literary forms such as terza rima and the villanelle while simultaneously exploring the poetics of prose and other "formless" modes,Facts for Visitorsre-negotiates the impasse between traditional and experimental approaches to writing in contemporary American poetry.

Table of Contents

Burial Practice	3	(4)
I Corruption	7	(16)
Loose Strife with Apiary	8	(1)
Hotel Lullaby	9	(1)
First Circle	10	(1)
Evening with Stars	11	(2)
Second Circle	13	(1)
Sundial	14	(1)
Raven & Eclipse	15	(1)
Centaur	16	(1)
Sixth Circle	17	(1)
Everything	18	(1)
Eighth Circle	19	(4)
II Thieves' Market	23	(18)
Inner Life	24	(1)
Jungle Book	25	(1)
Ninth Circle
I. The Interpreter	26	(1)
II. Luck	27	(1)
III. Canisters	28	(2)
IV. Home	30	(1)
V. The Planet	31	(1)
Scarecrow Eclogue	32	(2)
Fifth Circle	34	(1)
Waiting for the Eclipse in the Black Garden	35	(1)
Monsoon Eclogue	36	(5)
III Fundamentals of Esperanto	41	(18)
Fourth Circle	47	(1)
Chariot with Torn Bodice	48	(1)
Third Circle	49	(1)
On Difficulty	50	(1)
Welkin	51	(1)
Seventh Circle	52	(1)
Gryphon	53	(1)
Acid House	54	(1)
Sonnet	55	(1)
Palinode	56	(1)
Aria	57	(1)
Corruption (II)	58	(1)
Notes	59	(2)
Acknowledgments	61