{"product_id":"mesopotopia-isbn-9780143137023","title":"Mesopotopia","description":"\u003cb\u003e“To understand the radiance of the poetry world you have to look at Anne.” —Eileen Myles, author of \u003ci\u003eA Working Life\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFrom “one of the most important and irreducible living American poets” (Poetry Foundation) comes a powerful and prophetic collection of epic scope and vision\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eMesopotopia\u003c\/i\u003e explores the vast sweep of our accelerating, precipitous world. From the cradle to the grave, from the mysterious poetic origins of Mesopotamia to our own dystopias of the twenty-first century, Anne Waldman crafts a singular, radical investigation into the syncretic layers of quantum space and dreamtime. She invokes “studying” as the most compelling ritual and tool for evolution and travels to various fellaheen worlds, treading metabolic pathways and ancient “antitheses realities,” and gleans sacred texts that speak urgently through the transports and telepathies of poetry. Troubadour dawn songs, pyramid texts, Buddhist mantras, canonical hours of Judeo-Christian tradition, Persian prayers, Druid sorcery, and the wild, gnarly syntax and modal structure of Waldman’s particular performative passion and wit are all conjured here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat emerges is a meditation on the salient words of the French poet Antonin Artaud contemplating the destruction and rubble post–World War II: “We are not yet born, we are not yet in the world, there is not yet a world, things have not been made, the reason for being has not yet been found.” \u003ci\u003eMesopotopia\u003c\/i\u003e—mythic maelstrom, rhythmic rite of passage, protolanguage trance dance—moves toward release and gnosis.\u003cu\u003e\u003cb\u003eAdvance praise for \u003ci\u003eMesopotopia\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/u\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“To understand the radiance of the poetry world you have to look at Anne. In \u003ci\u003eMesopotopia\u003c\/i\u003e I’m struck by the fact she is such a \u003ci\u003egood\u003c\/i\u003e writer, her tone so rich \u0026amp; embodied, so frank you could hang anything on it and she does—in a moment when nobody knows what to do Anne extends us this canny oracular, a streaming prayer cobbled from every direction – in a grown up in NYC way, \u003ci\u003eMesopotopia\u003c\/i\u003e is today’s lucky read, gorgeous and full.” —\u003cb\u003eEileen Myles, author of \u003ci\u003eA Working Life\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The poem as an archive of histories and myths, an outlet for political rage, an inscape of universal compassion, a score for performance, an account of things touched and seen and dreamed, an atlas of the natural world, the language of a tribe: for sixty years, Anne Waldman has been taking us to what poetry was meant to be.” —\u003cb\u003eEliot Weinberger, author of\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e The Life of Tu Fu\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Anne Waldman’s \u003ci\u003eMesopotopia\u003c\/i\u003e unfolds in layered, palimpsestic compositions, forming potent murmurations of language: coordinated, shape-shifting, and spectacular. With an epic vision, these poems address complex themes, dreaming and unraveling threads of history and myth. It’s an enveloping performance, an urgent invocation. An utterly astonishing collection.” \u003cb\u003e—Hoa Nguyen, author of \u003ci\u003eA Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Shattered light in search of sprung lyric: with boundless energy, Anne Waldman has forged an epochal poem in the seams and veils of hermetic unfoldings. \u003ci\u003eMesopotopia\u003c\/i\u003e is a restless, wrestling, rousing, terracotta (earthen) anti-war warrior.” \u003cb\u003e—Charles Bernstein, author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Kinds of Poetry I Want\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cu\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for Anne's previous collection, \u003ci\u003eTrickster Feminism\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/u\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The pervading mood in \u003ci\u003eTrickster Feminism \u003c\/i\u003eis of a piece with our national mood: gloom-filled, sorrowing, yet occasionally threaded with hope . . . Reading Waldman is like being in the world today.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Waldman calls upon multiple resources – spirits, suffragettes, and heroines alike – to help defeat the trickster who disempowers women through capitalism and other tools . . . Waldman presents a complicated panorama of places and events – including resistance after the 2016 U.S. presidential election – in these accomplished, intertwined pieces.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Very apropos and very prescient . . . what’s reeling and alive is the freshness of topicality, personal and public, in this collection: ICE and immigration, the DOJ’s current personnel, the Women’s March, Oligarchism and global money laundering, technocracy, ‘Anthropocene weather complexities, nuclear threats, and so on.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Brooklyn Rail\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Reads like a spellbook — a mix of prose, verse, illustration and photography, woven together like the instructions to a ritual. But the incantatory poetry of \u003ci\u003eTrickster Feminism\u003c\/i\u003e is practical magic, Waldman’s way of meditating on — and taking action against — what she says are increasingly difficult times.” \u003cb\u003e—PBS.org\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Waldman’s poems are layered, enchanting, and challenging, but if you’re willing to go along for the ride, their movements will unsettle your thinking on gender, feminism, and the political powers at large in the United States today.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eTricycle Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eAnne Waldman\u003c\/b\u003e is a revered poet, performer, professor, editor, and cultural activist. She is the author of more than forty-five books, including \u003ci\u003eGossamurmur\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e Manatee\/Humanity\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble\u003c\/i\u003e, and the feminist epic \u003ci\u003eThe Iovis Trilogy\u003c\/i\u003e, which won the 2012 PEN Center USA Award for Poetry. The recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Before Columbus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Waldman makes her home in New York City and in Boulder, Colorado, where she is a Distinguished Professor of Writing and Poetics and artistic director of the Summer Writing Program at Naropa University.","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301938450661,"sku":"NP9780143137023","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780143137023.jpg?v=1767732587","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/mesopotopia-isbn-9780143137023","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}