The First Death

Despite being first in the publication history of the Poena Damni trilogy, Dimitris Lyacos's The First Death is the latest installment of the narrative sequence. A booklet found by the protagonist of Z213: EXIT during the course of his voyage, The First Death tells the story of a marooned man on a desert island - or has him tell it. In a sequence of fourteen sections the crippled protagonist struggles for his survival.Through an inexhaustible fecundity of imagery and a sense of unquenchable vitality in the midst of denial and despair a relentless fight develops between the character and the elements, as well as his physical and mental disintegration. Lyacos brings to bear a formidable culture in which fragments of ancient Greek are embedded in a supple modern idiom, and a variety of classical and biblical references are seamlessly integrated into the text. The violence and intensity of his vision combined with the headlong energy of his verse reveal a tragic inner landscape. The protagonist here could be a modern Philoctetes or an inverted version of Crusoe; but as the ordeal on the island comes to an end one is not finally sure whether one has encountered simply a wretched stump of humanity or, rather, a proudly self-mutilated god.

"Lyacos writes one of the most memorable traditionally experimental poetry collections I've read. It avoids the visual wankery of bill bissett (L33T nephew of e.e. cummings), the gentle chopping of line typical in Jorie Graham, and the terse verse of Rae Armantrout, while retaining the weightiness of surreal abstraction that can be found in Judas-invoking phrases like "(and you ascend into the flowers / of the tree where you were hanged)" and description of birds as "eyes burnt out faceted vision / unscrewed breastbones screaming." A guttural experience which is rarely experienced and which is what Poena Damni wants to be from the beginning."CLEAVER MAGAZINE"There is a sense of unquenchable vitality in the project, an inexhaustible fecundity of imagery in the midst of denial and despair. Lyacos brings to bear a formidable culture in which fragments of ancient Greek are embedded in a supple modern idiom, and a variety of classical and biblical references are seamlessly integrated into the text. "JOURNAL OF MODERN GREEK STUDIES"While "The First Death" is dominated by imagery of the infernal, it is (in its way) as skillfully articulated a vision of its theme as was Hieronymus Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" in another time and in different terms. Balancing Lyacos's labyrinth of shocking imagery there is the counterweight of intellectual stringency and spiritual austerity, so that the reader is invited to contemplate what is in effect an abstraction of horror, Lyacos's disturbing "feast of all fruits." 
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE/KATHIMERINI (English Edition)