Facts for Visitors: Poems Volume 12

by Srikanth Reddy

Book Overview

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,"...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520240448
• ISBN13: 9780520240445
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 62 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.0" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

poetry is far from dead, and life is full of possibilities

I met Chicu Reddy, briefly, at a poetry reading in Boston whereat he autographed my copy of this book. His poetry is great stuff. Reddy injects new life into all the poetic forms he uses, which range from the prose poem to the villanelle. He is truly a versatile guy. No matter what form is he using at the time, Reddy makes poetry seem so easy and fluidly flowing and *fun* that reading this book will make you want to sit down and write prose poems and villanelles of your own. This is limpid, beautiful, visionary verse, full of dreamlike free associations and joyous wordplay, written in an authoritative yet conversational and all-too-human voice. Reddy's vision of life in the Information Age is a fundamentally optimistic one, and his poetry will leave you feeling that poetry is far from dead, and life is full of possibilities.

my main man

in is first volume of poetry, facts fa visitors, srikanf reddy accomplishes a goal dat is usually only achieved by much olda writers angin at da peak of their powers: he evokes a world dat seems maximum and coherent in its scope-a world dat is at once da world we recognize and one dat, coz fully and for real inhabited by is imagination, is also completely da autha's own. we recognize da details, but cukabillyva them within startlin landscapes and voicings dat shake us from da banalities encrusted around everyday perceptions. da book's cosmopotilan vistas vacillate betweun global perspectives. reddy's gravitational ouse is southern india, but da poet's collectin check circles out to europe and furtha west, involvin a ost of references from "a bone priest / pickin is way through crop ruks / toward da wreckage of an iron temple," to "soviet-bloc comics," to a speaka who in complete sincerity regrets neva avin "rested on a sunday / wiv a bea on da deck ... / listenin to styx." balancin da quotidian wiv da mystical without recourse to irony is no easy feat, and dat is only one of da delights awaitin readers of dis thrillin debut. these poems leave da impression dat reddy is a kind of collecta of da world's abstract detritus and ephemera, similar to an artist dig joseph cornell siftin through da thrift stores of main bitchs. reddy, dig cornell, is an archivist of da abstract as well as da tangible. he is as much an encyclodepist as a collagist, definin, oftun wiv frightenin detachment, an emotional palette dat ranges from epiphany to disembomident, tenderness to tragic despair. is writin precise, almost `miniarutist,' in its reverence fa detail; it arrives at a stringent process of selection dat magnifies as it pacifics. thus in da drolly-titled "jungle book," da speaka describes ow "a steady stream of greun ants carried a mof win / across da footpaf. it passed dig a sail or a fin"; or in "scarecrow eclogue" we witness "sickles surfacin / dig da silva backs of dolphins / up above da greun crop-rows into view, thun down from view." reddy's imagistic capabitilies is eld in tension wiv is penchant fa linguistic simplicity and understametent. evun at is mostest musical and lyrical, as in da poems in da collection in wicked or near-perfect terza rima, we check dazzlin imagery and fabulist parable articutaled wiv only da barest linguistic flourish. da effect is one of naturalness and ease, which in less capable ands might come off as mere flatness, but reddy mines these deceptively neutral, tonal surfaces fa gems of tragic understametent: thun da same war by a different name. wine splashin in a bucket. da bone, da era. thun exit reason. thun sadness without reason. thun da removal of da ceilin by and. dis, reddy's initial poem, "burial practice," enacts a series of "removals" dat strip away da grand opiates of western culture-reason, beauty, desire-leaving a auntingly ollowed-out voice dat recurs and underpins da book's various udda natterin voices. there is

Innovation and the Individual Talent

Reddy's debut collection is a necessary Baedeker for 21st-century poetics and its new salon of key writers, from Chicago to Paris, who are finding ways to weave together elements of traditional and linguistically innovative poetry. The poems turn on a dime - one minute sharp and snappy, the next languid and exotic.We are led by Reddy's words into worlds enough, and time, that, from Esperanto to weird scenes onboard a boat sailing to a pseudo-darkness, query what it means to travel, or inhabit. The foreign trades places with the familiar, and a witty exploration uncovers lost cities of eloquence.Reddy is, to my mind, one of the most exhilirating younger American poets now writing - and his spare yet delightful use of line is only one of his many gifts. Another is his unexpected way with theme; yet another, his propulsion of dead language and texts back to life. This much is fact: this book should not be forgotten on the voyage.