Holy Ghost - (City Lights Spotlight) by David Brazil (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>Anarcho-socialism meets Christian mysticism in Occupy veteran's avant-garde poems.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p><strong>2018 California Book Award Finalist</strong></p> <p>The third full-length collection from poet-scholar-activist David Brazil, <em>Holy Ghost</em> is a hymnal with secular burdens, poured from the mold of our actual life in common, sung against its limits. It seeks a way to find and build a soul together, and records the seekers' findings along the way, proposing love as our common human denominator. A record of the author's struggle to forge a relationship between two distinct vocations--one historical, as an activist (with Occupy Oakland, among other projects), and one spiritual, as he explores the path of radical Christian discipleship (in his life as a pastor)--<em>Holy Ghost</em> attempts to articulate an understanding of where class struggle meets the will of God.</p> <p><strong>Praise for Holy Ghost: </strong></p> <p>Part of Brazil's worldview seems to be the perception that we are living in philosophically meager times, a new Dust Bowl of spiritual and moral poverty. He means to galvanize dissent, to encourage 'righteous action rhetoric can't break.' Through a clever patois, Brazil mixes elevated and colloquial language, benediction and idiom, to create captivating juxtapositions: 'in the splendid garden of the lambent forms, I'm / about to ask y'all a question.'--<em><strong>Publishers Weekly</strong></em></p> <p>Brazil's poems are incantations, rhythmic, jagged, calling. He creates an atonal, jazzy, and welcoming spirit ... Though there is an echo of John Cage-like change music, Brazil's poetry is drawn from the language, sounds, and beat of everyday life, made new and alluring.--<em><strong>Booklist</strong></em></p> <p>One of the special books of this decade and should be read by Souls or Ghosts or <em>Geists</em> in search of assurance ... Brazil's <em>Holy Ghost</em> is as Romantic as a long poem by Percy Shelley. An act of beauty--breath-taking.--<strong>Michael McClure</strong></p> <p>All singing is contemporaneous in the heart, & thus I'd call <em>Holy Ghost</em> heart-felt. It keeps time with the forms of its devotion ... So it arrives rich, by which I mean empty handed, & so doing makes the book into a little ball of light, a trove of mercy's tone, & my heart's treasure.--<strong>Dana Ward</strong></p> <p>'When time is the instrument, grace is the measure, ' writes David Brazil, in this dazzling book of 'earthly liturgy.' These poems of glorification, joyful and solemn, speak to the erasure of the boundary between mrtam/amrtam (death/non-death) and recall Blake's <em>Songs of Innocence and Experience</em> as well as Robert Duncan's <em>Heavenly City Earthly City</em>. With clarity and infinite finesse, the rhythms and tensile swing of Brazil's writing direct hymn's availability, from today's idiomatic speech to a yesteryear of sermon and rune. Every note counts.--<strong>Norma Cole</strong></p><p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><p>Holy Ghost expresses the ideological cacophony of our times and juxtaposes it against the simplicity of human need. ... impossible to ignore. ... <em>Holy Ghost</em> is a songbook of anti-classist marches, a ratatat book of hours for the disenfranchised, but it doesn't offer its comforts easily, or with easily-quotable snippets. There is digging to be done here to unearth the fragile temple in the rubbish of incarnation.--<em>Rain Taxi</em></p><p>Brazil [has] thrust back into the collective imagination [that] perhaps the bulk of our efforts should not be spent on petty inner disputes but rather on spreading the message that capitalism is unsustainable and that a new system can arise if we believe, faithfully, that it can. ... Both [Brazil and John Milton] recognize the privileged position faith must take in an any sort of revolutionary act. While Milton reminds us to that hell can be made into a heav'n, Brazil turns our gaze towards the future: '[t]he joy that comes, the world that comes, ensemble.'"--<em>Empty Mirror</em></p><p>Part of Brazil's worldview seems to be the perception that we are living in philosophically meager times, a new Dust Bowl of spiritual and moral poverty. He means to galvanize dissent, to encourage 'righteous action rhetoric can't break.' Through a clever patois, Brazil mixes elevated and colloquial language, benediction and idiom, to create captivating juxtapositions: 'in the splendid garden of the lambent forms, I'm / about to ask y'all a question.'--<em>Publishers Weekly</em></p><p>Brazil's poems are incantations, rhythmic, jagged, calling. He creates an atonal, jazzy, and welcoming spirit ... Though there is an echo of John Cage-like change music, Brazil's poetry is drawn from the language, sounds, and beat of everyday life, made new and alluring.--<em>Booklist</em></p><p>So many poets are producing fearless, important work, and work that does not slight craft when facing our political reality. <em>Holy Ghost</em> by David Brazil, is an example of this kind of work."--<em>The Rumpus</em></p><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br>David Brazil is a poet, translator and novelist. His books include <i>The Ordinary</i> and <i>antisocial patience</i>. With Kevin Killian, he edited the <i>Kenning Anthology of Poets Theater 1945-1985</i>. From 2008 to 2011 he published over sixty issues of the seminal <i>TRY!</i> magazine with Sara Larsen. David co-pastors a house church in Oakland and works for social justice with the Faith Alliance for a Moral Economy. He's a Scorpio.
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