Furious Lullaby (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry) [Paperback]

Professor Oliver de la Paz (Author)

Book Description

Series: Crab Orchard Series in Poetry | Publication Date: September 25, 2007

Furious Lullaby is both a celebration of and a eulogy to the body in the twenty-first century. The collection, which examines the larger concepts of salvation and temptation in a world of blossoming strife, includes a series of aubades – dramatic poems culminating with the separation of lovers at dawn. The lovers suffer a metaphysical crisis, seeking to know what is good, what is evil, and how to truly know the difference. Knowing, however, invites the terrible into their world. The Devil, a seductive trickster, haunts the landscape as a voice who dares each inquisitor to learn about mortality, morality, the beautiful, and the unspeakable through direct experience. Furious Lullaby offers a departure from the lighter prose poetry of de la Paz’s Names above Houses and preserves the author’s concern with the nature of human grace.  

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The poems in Furious Lullaby contain as much mischief as they do music, surprising the reader with a chorus of unexpected voices—a scapula, the dead, the Devil—and weaving those moments into a series of heartbreaking aubades that sing to the gorgeous melancholy of memory and loss.”—Rigoberto Gonzalez, author of Other Fugitives and Other Strangers

“These poems have a quiet eroticism, a voice that makes you want to lean in closer.  Oliver de la Paz’s seductive lyricism draws us in; we find the beauty of the body, and its desires mark us as creatures of loneliness and mystery. The poems are meant not merely to explore this paradox, but to comfort, to sing in the dark, to do what poems do—find sublimity and timelessness.  This is fierce and memorable work.”—Beckian Fritz Goldberg, author of The Book of Accident

About the Author

Oliver de la Paz, an assistant professor of English at Western Washington University, is the author of Names above Houses, published by Southern Illinois University Press, and is a recipient of a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. His poems have appeared in the Literary Review, Quarterly West, Third Coast, and Asian Pacific American Review, and in the anthology Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Literature. He received his M.F.A. in creative writing at Arizona State University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press; 1st edition (September 25, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809327740
• ISBN-13: 978-0809327744
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,894,833 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Oliver de la Paz is the author of three collections of poetry, Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby (SIU Press), and the forthcoming Requiem for the Orchard (University of Akron Press). He co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Poetry. A recipient of a NYFA Fellowship Award and a GAP Grant from Artist Trust, his work has appeared in journals like Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Chattahoochee Review, and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. He teaches at Western Washington University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars 5 Stars for De La Paz.......a must have!!!, October 4, 2007

By 

Carl Childers "Carl Childers" (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Furious Lullaby (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry) (Paperback)

This book is full of extraordinary poems. I haven't put it down since I purchased it last week. Oliver De La Paz is destined to be one of the great poets of our time.