Dream of Order [Paperback]

Thomas Avena (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Using multifocuses of collage, poetry, prose, sculpture, and personal history, Avena (editor of Life Sentences, LJ 3/15/94) in his first collection documents "rituals of abasement" of homophobia and AIDS. Graphic observation of modalities of AIDS ("bright daubs of petal-bruised flesh catheter under the skin.") and what it's like to be "inscribed by mortality" are presented in "fevered" shards, which like bodies illuminated by strobe lights, leave a vivid image on the retina. Like Camus in The Plague, Avena concludes that an instinct for survival prevails over "the body's slow rupture." As with much political poetry, awareness shifts from experience (a "cancer garden") to ideology?the national health crisis of AIDS, "a kind of war." Less emphasis on an experimental format might have allowed this forthright work in homage of 20th-century victims to be more accessible to general readers. With a foreword by Adrienne Rich.?Frank Allen, Northampton Community Coll., Tannersville, Pa.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Alan Turing
All The Submarines Of The Us Navy
And Who Will Excavate Rooms For The Dead?
The Apartment: 1. Before Waking
The Apartment: 2. The Apartment (awakening)
The Apartment: 3. The Man Next Door (no. 13)
The Apartment: 4. We Desire To Be Hermetically Walled Away
The Apartment: 5. Romance Distracts A Child From His Play Of
The Apartment: 6. Dream Of The Apartment
Betrayal (1983)
Cancer Garden
Connections And Right After
Daylight
Declaration: One Wreath For The Funeral: 1. Manola And Bill
Declaration: One Wreath For The Funeral: 2. Bill, Asa, Thoma
Declaration: One Wreath For The Funeral: 3. The Unwrapping
Declaration: One Wreath For The Funeral: 4. Bill And Thomas
Declaration: One Wreath For The Funeral: 5. Cama De Lobos
Declaration: One Wreath For The Funeral: 6. Asa And Thomas
Dream Of Order: 1. The Servants
Dream Of Order: 2. Tuna
Dream Of Order: 3. The Emigrants
Dream Of Order: 4. Beguines
Dream Of Order: 5. Monoliths
Dream Of Order: 6. Freeway
Fable
False Arabia
In A Glass Cage
Inside The Museum
Land's End
Leaving: 1. New Environs
Leaving: 2. Sappho's Loss
Leaving: 3. The Reading: Coyote's Advance
Leaving: 4. Escape To Southern California
Leaving: 5. Return
A Midnight Poelmic
Moma Poems In Time Of The Plague: 1. Large Head Of Diego
Moma Poems In Time Of The Plague: 2. Christ Mocked By Soldie
Moma Poems In Time Of The Plague: 3. Three Men Walking
Moma Poems In Time Of The Plague: 4. Masks Confronting Death
Moma Poems In Time Of The Plague: 5. Rendezvous Of Friends
Panel 1
Plums (1989)
Pursuit
The Rage Of Tadao Ando
The Saber
Sans Ii
To The Artist Dying Young
Two And A Half Dreams For Max Jacob
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Mercury House; First Edition edition (April 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1562791028
• ISBN-13: 978-1562791025
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,544,302 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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