If Langston Hughes, Federico García Lorca and Frank O'Hara were exhumed to rub their recollections of New York City together over dal and black tea, they might produce a manuscript as rapturous as Yuyutsu Sharma's love letter to the five boroughs. Infused with the mythology of Sufi saints and Hindu deities, Blizzard Go Delhi is nonetheless utterly contemporary, juxtaposing Duane Reedes and Occupy Wall Streeters alongside Punjabi wheat fields and muscular Halwai-confectioners working over huge cauldrons of oil. Unrepentant in its sensuality, self-assured and visionary, Sharma's book is an extravagant tour de force that shows us that stepping off the train into New York City is to enter a realm "of wandering winter spirits and wavering speeches...a bedlam vision of a bedroom utopia that tries very hard every night to find a partner of sleep." Tries, but thankfully for us, fails and instead stays up to channel the manic, long-limbed energy of the city in this memorable and original verbal jazz solo. This book is a poetic triumph.
-Ravi Shankar, Executive Director of Drunken Boat, author of seven books/chapbooks of poetry & co-editor of W.W. Norton & Co.'s Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond
No comments:
Post a Comment