Sand Opera - Softcover

Metres, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1938584090 ISBN 13: 9781938584091

Publisher: Alice James Books, 2015

Synopsis

Sand Opera received Honorable Mention for the Arab American Book Award 2016, four years after its first section, "abu ghraib arias," in chapbook format, won the Arab American Book Award in 2012.
"Sand Opera is what political poetry must be like today in our age of seemingly permanent war."--Mark Nowak

Sand Opera emerges from the dizzying position of being named but unheard as an Arab American and out of the parallel sense of seeing Arabs named and silenced since 9/11. Polyvocal poems, arias, and redacted text speak for the unheard. Philip Metres exposes our common humanity while investigating the dehumanizing perils of war and its lasting effect on our culture.

From "Hung Lyres":
@
When the bombs fell, she could barely raisePreview
her pendulous head, wept shrapnel
until her mother capped the fire
with her breast. She teetered
on the highwire of herself. She
lay down & the armies retreated, never
showing their backs. When she unlatched
from the breast, the planes took off again.
Stubborn stars refused to fall . . .
Philip Metres has written a number of books, including Pictures at an Exhibition (2016), Sand Opera (2015), To See the Earth (Cleveland State, 2008), and Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront Since 1941 (University of Iowa, 2007). His work has appeared widely, including in Best American Poetry, and has garnered two NEA fellowships, the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, four Ohio Arts Council Grants, the Anne Halley Prize, the Arab American Book Award, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. He teaches at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.

About this title

About the Author:

Philip Metres is the author and translator of a number of books and chapbooks, including Pictures at an Exhibition (University of Akron 2016), winner of the Akron Poetry Prize; Sand Opera (Alice James 2015), which received the honorable mention for the Arab American Book Award); I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky (Cleveland State Poetry Center, 2015), shortlisted for the PEN Translation Award and the Read Russia Prize; Compleat Catalogue of Comedic Novelties: Poetic Texts of Lev Rubinstein (Ugly Duckling Presse 2014),which was longlisted for the National Translation Award; A Concordance of Leaves (Diode 2013) and abu ghraib arias (Flying Guillotine 2011), which both won the Arab American Book Award; To See the Earth (Cleveland State 2008); and Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront since 1941 (University of Iowa 2007). Hiswork has appeared in Best American Poetry, numerous journals and anthologies, and has garnered two NEA fellowships, the Lannan Fellowship, the George S. Hunt, S.J. Prize, the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, six Ohio Arts Council Grants, the Beatrice Hawley Award, two Arab American Book Awards, the ClevelandArts Prize, the Anne Halley Prize, the PEN/Heim Translation grant, a Russian Institute for Literary Translation grant, and the Creative Workforce Fellowship. He is professor of English and the director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Program at John Carroll University in Cleveland.

Review:

"The cumulative effect of [Sand Opera], its testimonies and gaps, its forms and disassemblies, is operatic and often incendiary, generally discomforting, and nearly always powerful. It is worth reading, and re-reading, to unearth the buried words."--Cleveland Plain Dealer
If writing persuasive political verse is a major test, then Philip Metres proves to be a star pupil. Sand Opera (Alice James, Jan. 2015), his formally inventive cri de coeur, sweeps from the increasingly, painfully fragmented lines of "abu ghraib arias" (one poem is simply a page-long clutch of punctuation marks) to visceral war scenes ("air/ of wrecks & reliquaries/ of wasp & papyrus/ barbed wire & hung/ lyre"). Redacted text, with small boxes replacing letters, suggests the suppressed voice of Arab Americans like Metres.--Library Journal 
"Intriguing." Noam Chomsky"Milosz talks about books that can save nations. [Sand Opera] is just such a book." Sean Thomas Dougherty. 
"Sand Opera is among the most powerful, articulate, and accomplished examples I know of [documentary poetry's] possibility.... Metres' poetics and his Sand Opera resonate with another recent, staggering, and necessary volume: Claudia Rankine's Citizen." Beth Marzoni, Pleiades Book Review.
 
"A bold and unforgettable collection that vividly explores the perils of war and the rippling effects it has on our culture.... Any writer striving to write about current events or who want to take a political stance in poetry needs to read this book." Amanda Huynh, Barely South Review 
"Sand Opera is an important contribution to our understanding of the historical moment, a moment permeated by a long and ongoing 'engagement' with the Arab and Muslim world in all its iterations: here, abroad and in the liminal spaces--Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the 'Salt Pit,' Parwan Detention Facility--that refuse to be reduced from their inborn and rich complexities." Adam Day, Gulf Coast
 
"[Sand Opera] is at once vibrantly uncomfortable, horrifyingly stimulating, and urgently needed." Eric Howerton, The Volta Blog
 
"Metres offers a complex document of both daily life and the horrors of history, a work of lyric resistance to the immense violence and rhetorical untruths of the 'war on terror.' The book that results possesses a grace I cannot yet describe." Hilary Plum, Kenyon Review Online
 
"In key ways, Metres represents the violated bodies of those who are part of the story but no longer have the agency to own their own words.... [Sand Opera] is a chilling book that piercingly interrogates language,power and how it is possible for words to embody even in their ghostly and obliterated remains." Oliver de la Paz, On the Seawall.
 
"Sand Opera is a visually compelling book of poetry that envelopes the reader in the space of war's victims." Irina Nersessova, War, Literature & the Arts
 
"To remain open and wounded, to break again and again, and yet to love and to dare to sing despite the fact that your lyrics are all broken--this is the job of the poet. Sand Opera is an essential book because its message is simple: we must 'open the spine binding our sight' and we must recite out of this darkness." Dante Di Stefano, Arcadia
 
"[Sand Opera] sprawls, and often such sprawling feels essential, as does the strangeness of it, the book's partial speakers estranged from our usual ways of making sense." Jonathan Farmer, Slate
 
"[Sand Opera] is a remarkable book, a troubling and absolutely necessary testament to the terrible cost of war." George Bilgere, Cleveland Magazine

"The book acts as a rebuttal... re-attuning us instead to the body's cry and finding a lullaby in its wake. Metres' resulting Opera is a carved shard, extracted via erasure out the concealed violence of the military term 'Standard Operating Procedure.'" Nomi Stone, Poetry Northwest

Philip Metres's Sand Opera is an operatic masterpiece that proportions remixed voices and tortured testimonies of detainees and military personnel of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and Guantanamo Bay Prison complex. These poems excavate, interrogate, and lament the relentless material consequences of American Empire while compelling us to bear witness to Standard Operating Procedures that maim, terrorize, and shame us all.  Sand Opera is an invocation to redress the silent echoes and erasures of human rights violations incurred by the ongoing war on terror.  This postmodern experimental work--grounded in embodied materialities, curated intimacies, and a profound commitment to human dignity--solidifies Metres's place as one of our most vital Arab American poets writing today. This work is a necessary contribution to the American literary canon and archive.--Judges' Citation, Arab American Book Award Honorable Mention 2016

About this edition

• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1938584090
• ISBN 13: 9781938584091
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 100