Empires - by John Balaban (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>Balaban's sixth collection of poetry considers America in its innate beauty and complex ugliness, in its powerfully healing landscapes and its destructive misadventures.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br>Balaban has long been one of our finest poetic craftsmen working in the lyric mode. In his latest collection, <em>Empires</em>, Balaban once again demonstrates why he is celebrated as a major American poet. --<em>War, Literature, and the Arts</em> <p/> John Balaban's <em>Empires</em> is an elegant addition to this distinguished poet's body of work, and will surely be remembered as one of the indispensable poetry publications of its decade.--<em>Literary Matters</em> <p/> John Balaban's sixth collection of poetry considers America in its innate beauty and complex ugliness, in its powerfully healing landscapes and its destructive misadventures. With a compelling lyricism and cinematic imagery, <i>Empires</i> showcases the pervasiveness of the human spirit across a diverse cast of characters, both modern and ancient. From the rubble of the World Trade Center to Washington's troops crossing the Potomac to powerful insights into the Vietnam War, Balaban's genius is in connecting the dots of history. Despite the destruction and persecution associated with empires, Balaban illuminates the often overlooked transcendent hope available through poetry, music, and an unwavering connection to the land. Through heart warming elegies, gripping narratives and new translations from several Romanian poets, Balaban's poems shine a redemptive light amidst the darkness and chaos of changing empires. <p/> "In a way that few poets do, John Balaban truly roams the globe--and the centuries. He has his eye on empires, yes, but also on moments when different slices of history collide... His capacious poems enlarge our eyes on the world." --Adam Hochschild <p/> "In these poems, John Balaban plumbs the recent and ancient past. His generous spirit and technical brilliance cast a very bright light. <i>Empires</i> is luminous work." --Elizabeth Farnsworth<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>"Written with a storyteller's verve, this collection entertains as it provokes and will appeal to may readers." --<em>Library Journal</em> <p/> "Balaban expresses a shrewd understanding of how the world works, and a clarion respect for life." ―<em>Booklist, </em> starred review <p/> At its best, John Balaban's <em>Empires</em> shows an exceptional poet growing still better in his seventh decade. Taken altogether, it is a strong piece of work that rises, at times, to that level at which reviews cannot do justice. --Eclectica <p/> In his new book, <em>Empires</em>, [Balaban] once again demonstrates a piercing moral vision of humanity broken by colonialism and war and ethnic violence, yet he also offers possibilities for healing. --<em>Los Angeles Review of Books</em> <p/> Balaban has long been one of our finest poetic craftsmen working in the lyric mode. In his latest collection, <em>Empires</em>, Balaban once again demonstrates why he is celebrated as a major American poet. --<em>War, Literature, and the Arts</em> <p/> I could not put <em>Empires</em> down. Balaban presents the distant past as though it is right there before us, and the present with renewed understanding. 'Gods and Empire.' 'Returning After Our War.' The insights are this-minute fresh, the language invigorating. --Grace Schulman <p/> "In a way that few poets do, John Balaban truly roams the globe--and the centuries. He has his eye on empires, yes, but also on moments when different slices of history collide... His capacious poems enlarge our eyes on the world." --Adam Hochschild <p/> "In these poems, John Balaban plumbs the recent and ancient past. His generous spirit and technical brilliance cast a very bright light. <em>Empires</em> is luminous work." --Elizabeth Farnsworth <p/> Balaban is a traveler through history and places at home and abroad, writing in a personal voice that has an uncanny ability to imagine the lives of others. His poetry comes from a deep reading of literature--among other things, he is a renowned translator of Vietnamese poetry--and a willingness to go out into the world to see things for himself. --PBS NewsHour <p/> "Balaban juggles all of these angles with elegance and poise, without falling prey to exoticism, or orientalism, or whatever one calls it when a writer distorts another culture through the prism of his own limited, and limiting experience." ―<em>Prairie Schooner</em> <p/> "His journey suggests a moral urgency--the soldier mugged in the bus station, a legless vet in the nowhere gas station, the exiled Slavic poet tossing back vodkas in Paris--and is conveyed with wry narrative lyricism, juggling light and dark. The poems encompass both our bleakest times and the fugue of intertwining spirits, charged music we long to hear." ―Artcetera, Nevada Arts Council <p/> John Balaban creates worlds within worlds in his latest collection, <em>Empires</em>. Each poem is enriched by cultural images that compel us to dive into their landscapes and experience unusual scenery so engaging that they become special worlds of multifaceted delights. --New York Journal of Books <p/> "Balaban's language is lyrical and lovely, lifting us beyond the morass of our complicated lives, instilling in our hearts the hope of an exalted existence here on earth." ―W.S. Merwin <p/> As featured by PBS NewsHour, We read these 29 books in 2019. You should too.<br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br>John Balaban is the author of twelve books of poetry and prose, including four volumes which together have won The Academy of American Poets' Lamont prize, a National Poetry Series Selection, and two nominations for the National Book Award. His <i>Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems</i> won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2003, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2005, he was a judge for the National Book Awards. In addition to writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, he is a translator of Vietnamese poetry, and a past president of the American Literary Translators Association. In 1999, with two Vietnamese friends, he founded the Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation. In 2008, he was awarded a medal from the Ministry of Culture of Vietnam for his translations of poetry and his leadership in the restoration of the ancient text collection at the National Library. Balaban is Professor Emeritus of English at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
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