Music for the Dead and Resurrected: Poems

Mort, Valzhyna

ISBN 10: 0374252068 / ISBN 13: 9780374252069

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020

Former library book; May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0374252068I4N10

Synopsis:

WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL GRIFFIN PRIZE
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST POETRY BOOKS OF 2020 BY The New York Times

In her book of letters to the dead, the prize-winning poet Valzhyna Mort relearns how to mourn those erased by violent history.

With shocking, unforgettable lyric force, Valzhyna Mort’s Music for the Dead and Resurrected confronts the legacy of violent death in one family in Belarus. In these letters to the dead, the poet asks: How do we mourn after a century of propaganda? Can private stories challenge the collective power of Soviet and American historical mythology?

Mort traces a route of devastation from the Chernobyl fallout and a school system controlled by ideology to the Soviet labor camps and the massacres of World War II. While musical form serves as a safe house for the poet’s voice, old trees speak to her as the only remaining witnesses, hosts to both radiation and memory.

Valzhyna Mort, born in Belarus and now living in the United States, conjures a searing, hallucinogenic ritual of rhythmic remembrance in a world where appeals to virtue and justice have irrevocably failed.

About the Author: Valzhyna Mort is the author of Factory of Tears and Collected Body. She has received the Lannan Foundation Fellowship, the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry, the Amy Clampitt Residency, the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation, and the Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award. Born in Minsk, Belarus, she writes in English and Belarusian.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Music for the Dead and Resurrected: Poems
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: 2020
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket