Lyric Poetry Is Dead - by Ezequiel Zaidenwerg (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Poetry. Latinx Studies. Art. Translated by Robin Myers. Illustrated by Carmen Amengual. Ambitiously and with turbulent energy, Ezequiel Zaidenwerg takes on contemporary history and its uneasy relation to and representation by lyric poetry. Wary of old mythologies, Zaidenwerg nevertheless draws from them and from the bank of international literature to make this downpayment on a ferocious, self-conscious, and activist poetics for the 21st century.--Forrest Gander

Zaidenwerg has a prosody that is both brutal and fragile. Every stroke of his syntax, in fertile tension with the images that accompany his poems, opens up the spectrum of possibility for observing and documenting the fleeting, disjointed, fucked-up world around us.--Valeria Luiselli

Ironic, lucid, fierce, contradictory--in short, fascinating, LYRIC POETRY IS DEAD by Ezequiel Zaidenwerg is one of a kind, a poem that takes the form of a historical chronicle and relays in whisper tones the end of the journey that began with the death of the suitors in the Odyssey and concludes with another death--the death of poetry. This extraordinary and singular book raises up a new language that confirms Ezequiel Zaidenwerg as one of the most unique and captivating poets to have emerged from Latin America in recent times. His poetry is the first to refute the claim laid out in his title: LYRIC POETRY IS DEAD. And that refutation is something not all poets are in a position to make.--Raúl Zurita

Wicked and wise, Zaidenwerg's poems turn a commonplace into an incantation that Robin Myers makes sing--and scream, and spit--in English. The lyric is dead; long live the lyric.--Heather Cleary