John High, A Book of Unknowing
ISBN : 978-1-58498-068-1, book, $17.95
“Imagine a novel whose setting is dark and indeterminate, whose nameless characters are shadowy, and whose circular plot unfolds timelessly—and you will be imagining John High’s A Book of Unknowing. These powerful poems, whose language rushes past in a torrent of disorienting yet evocative images and sounds, will pull you out of this world and into another, that matters a great deal more, where all that you think you know becomes doubtful.” --Norman Fischer
“John High’s poems, threaded together by narratives of childhood that span a century, are always immediate, grounded, and as fleeting as the moment. Throughout, High’s ear stays close to the heart. The music is visible.” --Matvei Yankelevich
"The goal of a quest is often return: in John High’s A Book of Unknowing, a mute girl and a one-eyed boy move through a war-marked landscape, orphaned and adopted and orphaned anew. They seek to return not to pre-lapsarian purity but to the vivid articulation of 'a brilliance of green across meadow in this / day when we find so much arrangement in myriad trees. Coming to terms with fine / bladed yellow grass' (99). That is, aware that 'in order / to get out we have to go through / language,' the characters in High’s poetic sequence 'come to terms' with the hardy arrangements underlying innocence and loss. Traveling the 'wounded way / back to our beginning' (116), they return to an advanced childhood in which they parent themselves and forgive all, having found 'how / a question might endure alive internal workings / in mutual air moving / toward a quiet believing and awe' (111).
"This arrival is gorgeous, paradisiacal . . . ." --Zach Savich, Jacket2
John High ranks among the most accomplished and respected poets, translators, and editors of his generation. Founding editor of Five Fingers Review and author of The Lives of Thomas, The Sasha Poems, The Desire Notebooks, Bloodline: Selected Writings, and Here, among others, he is one of his generation’s foremost translators of contemporary
Russian poetry. The principal editor of Crossing Centuries: The New Generation in Russian Poetry, he is known for his translations of Nina Iskrenko, Ivan Zhdanov, and Alexei Parschikov, among others. A former Fulbright professor at Moscow State Linguistics University, he currently teaches at Long Island University.
“Imagine a novel whose setting is dark and indeterminate, whose nameless characters are shadowy, and whose circular plot unfolds timelessly—and you will be imagining John High’s A Book of Unknowing. These powerful poems, whose language rushes past in a torrent of disorienting yet evocative images and sounds, will pull you out of this world and into another, that matters a great deal more, where all that you think you know becomes doubtful.” --Norman Fischer
“John High’s poems, threaded together by narratives of childhood that span a century, are always immediate, grounded, and as fleeting as the moment. Throughout, High’s ear stays close to the heart. The music is visible.” --Matvei Yankelevich
"The goal of a quest is often return: in John High’s A Book of Unknowing, a mute girl and a one-eyed boy move through a war-marked landscape, orphaned and adopted and orphaned anew. They seek to return not to pre-lapsarian purity but to the vivid articulation of 'a brilliance of green across meadow in this / day when we find so much arrangement in myriad trees. Coming to terms with fine / bladed yellow grass' (99). That is, aware that 'in order / to get out we have to go through / language,' the characters in High’s poetic sequence 'come to terms' with the hardy arrangements underlying innocence and loss. Traveling the 'wounded way / back to our beginning' (116), they return to an advanced childhood in which they parent themselves and forgive all, having found 'how / a question might endure alive internal workings / in mutual air moving / toward a quiet believing and awe' (111).
"This arrival is gorgeous, paradisiacal . . . ." --Zach Savich, Jacket2
John High ranks among the most accomplished and respected poets, translators, and editors of his generation. Founding editor of Five Fingers Review and author of The Lives of Thomas, The Sasha Poems, The Desire Notebooks, Bloodline: Selected Writings, and Here, among others, he is one of his generation’s foremost translators of contemporary
Russian poetry. The principal editor of Crossing Centuries: The New Generation in Russian Poetry, he is known for his translations of Nina Iskrenko, Ivan Zhdanov, and Alexei Parschikov, among others. A former Fulbright professor at Moscow State Linguistics University, he currently teaches at Long Island University.