Revenants [Paperback]

Mark Nowak (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2000

Mark Nowak encounters the whispers of creation and cultural remembrance in his eminent, visionary poetry.Revenantsis an original return to a splendid ethos of ancestral word patterns, and the images bear the solemn pleasures of time, place, and singular landscapes.—Gerald Vizenor

This first book length collection of poetry by the editor of the journalXCP: Cross-Cultural Poeticsexplores the Polish American neighborhoods in and around Buffalo, New York, finding collective truths in the particularity of a unique culture.

Mark Nowak is the editor of Theodore Enslin’s selected poems,Then, and Now,and an associate professor at the College of St. Catherine in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His poems have been anthologized inAn Anthology of New (American) PoetsandChildren of the Cold War: A Scrapbook.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A striking example of investigative poetics, this first collection uses ethnographic techniques to research the customs, history and stories of the poet's Polish ancestry. The poems are filled with domestic details: recipes, descriptions of clothing, food sold at markets, descriptions of rooms. From these private and local situations, the poems move from the particular to the universal, reaching across oceans and time to access larger human stories: "We speak/ of the mountains there, a spine that connects/ her house and mine./ I think about/ St. Casmir feeding birds. I think/ about the Infant of Prague." In the final section, "Back Me Up," Nowak collages together quotes from an ethnographer's field notebooks, scholarly essays, and interviews conducted in western New York with the members of his local Polish community. These assembled fragments simultaneously question and affirm the poet-ethnographer's attempt to find his own identity within his rich cultural heritage. Many of the poems lack C.S. Giscombe's austere punch or Susan Howe's missionary zeal, to name two poets working in similar modes, but Nowak's quiet investigations should find an audience with anyone interested in Polish-American identity or in poetry's potential for projecting the self into the self-descriptions of others. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

'back Me Up'
The Pain-dance Begins
Zwyczaj
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Coffee House Press (October 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566891078
• ISBN-13: 978-1566891073
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,927,488 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.