The Golden Labyrinth: Poems [Paperback]

Maurya Simon (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

An old Spanish proverb advises, "He, who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him." Simon, who visited India on a Fulbright, did just that. The result is this, her fourth volume of poetry. These are a traveler's poems, not a tourist's: "Here's where the world begins and ends?at Eden's edge, and no further." Not only does Simon describe the colorful jangle of the markets and streets, but she recognizes what is behind them. Her best poems counter physical sensations with spiritual longings, and her best works are elegies?in particular, "Alex in Hindustan," in which Simon takes all that she has learned from India's poverty and suffering to come to terms with a friend's death. A few poems never get past description, but you can't fault Simon too much, not in a land where elephants enter musth, swamis fly, and "a scent of ratri-rani/floats upon the air." This is a moving, eloquent collection. In these lines, Simon could even be describing herself: "She is selling all she has left of hope: a dirge/frail as the wildflowers trembling in the heat." Recommended for all collections.?Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, Ind.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Alex In Hindustan
Ars Femina
At Ranganathithu Bird Sanctuary
At The Kabini River
Banded Krait
Bangalore Lullaby
The Bishop Of Mysore
Commercial Street
Dharma
Elegy In A Snowstorm
The Flying Swami
The Golden Labyrinth
In The Nilgiris
Karma
Karma Again
Kodaikanal
Leah In The Vale Of Tears
Letter From Bangalore
Maya
Meditation At Twilight
Monsoon
Mothers Of Invention
Nagarahole
Periyar Lake
Pondicherry
Pride
Radha Addresses Krishna
Russell Market
Shiva's Prowess
Solitaire
Street Scene
Tableau Vivant
Taj Mahal
Tribals
The Ugly Dog
Veerappan
Village Market
Want
The Yogi Speaking
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

In The Golden Labyrinth, Maurya Simon draws on her own experiences while living and traveling in southern India, where she witnessed almost daily the extremities of the human condition -- dire poverty and opulent wealth, frenzied materialism and stoic spirituality, excruciating suffering and ecstatic joy. Many of the poems address the continual confrontation with the fluctuations and turmoil in others' lives so different from Simon's own, while others attempt to integrate and understand the religious, philosophical, and ethical motives and behavior of the people she met in India. The poems describe the labyrinth of India, a frightening, desperate place for a foreigner to explore, but a place that seems to offer a transcendent good at its core for those who can learn to find it. From a filthy boy spontaneously bursting into song on a street corner to a beggar-woman whose offering of she has left (a frail dirge) "defies her terrible hunger", Simon reminds us again and again of what she learned in India: that "each small world transforms itself". -- Midwest Book Review

Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Missouri Pr; First edition. edition (March 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826209955
• ISBN-13: 978-0826209955
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,469,448 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Maurya Simon is the author of The Enchanted Room and Days of Awe (Copper Canyon Press, 1986, 1989), Speaking in Tongues (Gibbs Smith, 1990), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and The Golden Labyrinth (University of Missouri Press, 1995). A fifth volume, A Brief History of Punctuation, was published in a limited edition by the fine letter-press book publisher, Sutton Hoo Press, in 2002. Simon's sixth volume, Ghost Orchid (Red Hen Press, 2004) was nominated for a 2004 National Book Award in Poetry. A limited edition, letter-press collection of ekphrastic poems, WEAVERS, based on the paintings of Los Angeles artist Baila Goldenthal, was published by Blackbird Press in October 2005, and Simon's eighth volume of poems, The Mapmaker's Art, was published in 2007. "Tamar," an opera based on Simon's eponymous verse libretto, premiered at the University of Rhode Island in the Spring of 2007. Her most recent collection of poems is a novel in verse entitled The Raindrop's Gospel: The Trials of St. Jerome and St. Paula, published in 2010 by Elixir Press.

Simon has been the recipient of two Visiting Artist Fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, an NEA Fellowship in poetry, a University Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Celia B. Wagner and Lucille Medwick Memorial Awards from the Poetry Society of America, and a Fulbright/Indo-American Fellowship to conduct research in Bangalore, South India. Simon has been a fellow at Hawthornden Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland, and at the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators in Visby, Sweden, as well as a lecturer at Lund University in Sweden. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Grand Street, Agni, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, the New England Review, and in more than fifty anthologies. Simon's poetry has been translated into French, Rumanian, Bengali, Spanish, and Farsi.

Maurya Simon is a Professor Emerita in the Creative Writing Department at the University of California, Riverside. She lives in the Angeles National Forest of the San Gabriel Mountains, in Southern California.