What if, Pavlic asks without asking, the War on Terror is also a war for America, between America, of America. What if this is the scream of a nation in psychic crisis, a scream that bounces back at itself, increasingly louder. We travel, with Ed on a boat, to Siu, on an island a few miles away from Somalia; an island where Fazul Mohammed, one of the world's most wanted terrorists, once spent a few months. If, here, we have found ourselves in one geographical epicentre of a global war, we find no embers or fevers, no axis, no Weevils-we find a community, where "they bragged about the beautiful donkeys of Siu. Well-fed. Rested. Oiled. They said the donkeys of Lamu are more like flea-bitten dogs than donkeys." This book is not quite prose, not really a travel book. We move through this space, with photographs, in real boat-rowing, feet-walking time, in poetic and metaphysical space, the words create their own human country, and allow us to inhabit Pavlic's question. The world he makes begs such a question, one of those giant dangerous worlds poets and writers sometimes forget it is our job to make. --Binyavanga Wainaina "But Here are Small Clear Refractions" challenges the reader long after it has been closed... The natural moments of magical realism transport us to a landscape primarily shaped through deep feeling, and we don't wish to exit this rough beauty. --Yusef Komunyakaa We learn much from Pavlic's eye and ear... The poet as listener, camera as mind in respectful encounter with places and privacies. No clichés, no colonizing claims, no ego-indulgence. Here, depth-perception and beauty of language resist classification. This is a remarkable work, not a "travel book" but one that should travel far. --Adrienne Rich ...lyrically and visually engaging, unraveling silent beats that unite rather than divide us. Ed Pavlic's poems are rituals for awareness ...a stunning contribution to international literature. --Nathalie Handal

But Here Are Small Clear Refractions

Ed Pavlić

Chinua Achebe Center

Winner of the APR/Honickman First Book.
In her introduction Adrienne Rich describes Paraph of Bone &amp; Other Kinds of Blue, as "a fully conceived book, speaking as a whole from the first lines to the last... Mr. Pavlic has listened closely to our most profound American art, the blues and jazz, and that music has not only helped him achieve poetic form but allowed him to explore a mesh of experience extraneous to literary theories... This is intimate and soulful work, breathing, brushing, and tonguing its instrument."
In response to Charlie Parker's theory of art, "If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn," Ed Pavlic breathes exuberant life into his poetry through rigorous attention to overlapping facets of language—visual, tonal, rhythmic.
from "Confessions of a Piano Roll Lover":
&amp; this new player, he's just a boy. Well drilled, won't allow his thumb to drag behind his index finger. Mistakes won't leave exit wounds, or bloom in his lapel until they're his alone. Grown. With a pocket Full of rock salt in his gait, &amp; jalapeño beard.
Ed Pavlic received his BA and MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a PhD from Indiana University. He currently teach in the English Department at Union College in Schenectady, NY. His work has appeared in African American Review, Doubletake, The Black Warrior Review and elsewhere. His critical book, Crossroads Modernism: Descent and Emergence in African American Modernism is forthcoming in 2002. He lives in Schenectady, NY.

Paraph of Bone & Other Kinds of Blue (Poems)

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

American Poetry Review

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Books by Ed Pavlić

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ed Pavlić. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

But Here Are Small Clear Refractions

Paraph of Bone & Other Kinds of Blue (Poems)