Path, Crooked Path

by Balaban, John

• ISBN13: 9781556592386
• ISBN10: 1556592388
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-05-01
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Pr

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. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Highway 61 Revisited	p. 5
Looking Out from the Acropolis, 1989	p. 7
Georgi Borrisov in Paris	p. 10
Some Dogs of the World	p. 11
On the Death of His Dog, Apples	p. 13
The Lives of the Poets	p. 14
Romania, Romania	p. 19
Ovid, Tristia V.x:15-22	p. 20
The Siege	p. 21
Ibn Fadhlan, the Arab Emissary, Encounters Vikings on the Volga River, A.D.922	p. 22
Loving Graham Greene	p. 24
A Vision	p. 26
Soldier Home	p. 27
Let Him Be	p. 28
Waiting in a Desert Canyon	p. 29
Poor Sap	p. 30
Sotol	p. 31
Root Boy Slim	p. 33
If Only	p. 34
Leaving	p. 35
Head-to-Toe	p. 37
Miami Suite
A Note to Hayden Carruth from Miami	p. 41
Butter People	p. 42
Some Notes on Miami	p. 44
Eddie	p. 49
Dinner in Miami	p. 51
Big Boy	p. 53
After Hurricane Andrew	p. 54
Remembering Miami	p. 56
Anna Akhmatova Spends the Night on Miami Beach	p. 58
A Little Story	p. 63
Varna Snow	p. 65
Van Gogh	p. 67
Dr.Alice Magheru's Room	p. 68
Driving Back East with My Dad	p. 70
The Goodbyes	p. 72
The Great Fugue	p. 73
About the Author	p. 77
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