Monday, March 19, 2012

Out from Otoliths—Resinations by Javant Biarujia

Now out from Otoliths


Resinations
Javant Biarujia
72 pages
Cover design by Sheila E. Murphy
Otoliths, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9872010-1-0
$13.95 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/shop/javant-biarujia/resinations/paperback/product-18929536.html


Javant Biarujia’s latest collection, “Resinations”, takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through, mostly, Western (pop) art, culture and politics, from Kant to Dorothy Lamour, the Inquisition to “Leave It to Beaver”, Tallahassee to Drancy, and much more. Resinations, itself a neologism, is echoic of resonations — every pun is intended in this collection — as well as resignation, at once an Eastern concept and a Western reality for many an employee. In sixty-four numerologically significant “pantoums” (Biarujia’s idea of such at any rate), in which “all pastiche and no parono- / masia makes the past a dull Lautréamont” (“Labdanum”), he mirrors the world back at us, always startling, distinctive, original. His poetry is at times complex and multilayered, but it is always rich, witty and meaningful, what Charles Bernstein has called “quixotically alluring,” and Gig Ryan, “fun and mock bawdiness.” Or, as Biarujia himself says: “through levity to levitation.”

“A subversive master craftsman, [Biarujia] propels the language through a cultural and political labyrinth”— Jaya Savige

“This is a poetry that leads the reader not only in and down but also, through re-sounding, across, crossing boundaries, making unthought of connections, exploring the fertile errata of translation. Biarujia sends out sounds that skip from language to language in a series of transformations/ interactions” — Geraldine McKenzie

“[‘Calques’] is a compelling, stimulating, intricately wrought, sometimes hauntingly beautiful and often very funny book, written in styles at once globalised and hermetic, archaic and futuristic” — Chris Edwards

“Decadence and postmodernism collide and combine in texts which are inimitably Biarujia” — Kris Hemensley

No comments: