Avia - Softcover

Tarn, Nathaniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1848610025 ISBN 13: 9781848610026

Publisher: Shearsman Books, 2008

Synopsis

Avia is a book-length epic poem that takes for its subject matter the war in the air in World War Two. The verse narratives are stories told by combat pilots from all the major battle theatres, but are related to Charles Lindbergh in a dream as he returns to the United States following his 1927 transatlantic flight. Voices from his future and from our past.

About this title

About the Author:

Nathaniel Tarn was born in 1928 in Paris of British-Lithuanian and French-Rumanian parents, educated in France, Belgium and England, obtaining degrees from Cambridge, the Sorbonne and Chicago; he emigrated to the United States in 1970, where he taught at American universities until his retirement. He now lives near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Although he is perhaps best-known these days as a poet and essayist, he is also an anthropologist, with a particular interest in Highland Maya studies and the sociology of Buddhist institutions, and is a translator of the highest order (see above all his versions of Neruda and Segalen). His first collection of poetry was Old Savage/Young City (1964), which was followed the next year by his appearance in the seventh volume of the Penguin Modern Poets series. Three more collections followed in London, during which time he also became editor of the remarkable Cape Editions series of seminal modern texts: poetry, prose, anthropology, drama, many of them pioneering translations. He emigrated to the United States in 1970, after which only two more collections - the important volume A Nowhere for Vallejo and the ambitious book-length poem Lyrics for the Bride of God - were to appear in the UK. Thereafter, the majority of his work has appeared in the USA, most significantly: The House of Leaves, Atitlan/Alashka (with Janet Rodney), At the Western Gates, and Selected Poems 1950-2000. There is also an important volume of essays in Views from the Weaving Mountain. Tarn's work is remarkable for expansiveness and its willingness to absorb material from very disparate sources - in this, it owes something to the examples of Pound and Olson, but also much to the author's own anthropological training, his knowledge of other languages and his many interests.

About this edition

• Publisher: Shearsman Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1848610025
• ISBN 13: 9781848610026
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 303