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Anis
Shivani
December 15, 2010
The 17 Most Important Poetry Books
of Fall 2010
Fall 2010 has been a great season for poetry. There are important
retrospectives of H. L. Hix's remarkable career and that of the
leading Arab poet, Adonis; new work by exciting young African
American poets Thomas Sayers Ellis and Major Jackson; politically
charged poetry by C. D. Wright and Anna Rabinowitz; late-career
flourishes by veterans Paul Muldoon and Charles Simic; engaging
experimental poetry by John Taggart and Julie Carr; and solidifying
entries by poets of international stature like Kamau Brathwaite and
Wislawa Szymborska. There's much to be excited about, and these
selections give a fair indication of the presses putting out the
most important poetry of the day and the degree of vitality of
various poetic styles.
 Anna Rabinowitz, 'Present Tense' (Omnidawn)
Exemplary Lines: "A storm careens from the east / and acid rains
make vegetation cower. // Asphodel, rose, columbine / Lie down among
dandelions... // Clouds crouch while deserts flash / And roads are
gashed by thrusts of broken glass. // The ontogeny is tired. // In
desperate rendezvous our plenitude cries stop. // No eye cocked
toward heaven, no remedy in unchecked want--." ("Notes: Coercive
Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources")
Anna Rabinowitz does apocalypse so well I can't get enough of it.
She has allowed her poetry to become vulnerable to an extreme
degree--a fragile presentation always insecure about its cultural
status--because of the agonies of the recent collective past. In
repeating sections called "A History of Time" and "Present Tense,"
she boldly collapses the falseness of the "us" versus "them"
dichotomy, exposing the latent turn to barbarism beneath the veneer
of civilization. Violence, once invented, cannot be undone. The
destructiveness of mankind employs its greatest resources of
ingenuity. Language, our only tool against barbarism, becomes a
colonized ghost town. Rabinowitz has the audacity to recognize how
battered we have become by the inextricable link between desire and
destruction. - Anis Shivani
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AMERICAN OPERA PROJECTS ANNOUNCES 22ND SEASON
NEWS
2010-11 SEASON OFFERS PREMIERE OPERAS, COMMISSIONED SONGS, AND
EVENTS FEATURING DISCUSSIONS WITH CREATORS
The monodrama series continues with THE WANTON
SUBLIME (by Heart of Darkness composer Tarik O’Regan .and DARKLING
librettist Anna Rabinowitz)
April 29, 2011: The Wanton Sublime.
AOP teams with Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study to present a
piano-vocal workshop of THE WANTON SUBLIME, a new monodrama (composer,
Tarik O’Regan; librettist Anna Rabinowitz). Wolfensohn Hall, The
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ.
AOP will be entering
the recording studio with the first-ever CD recording of its
commissioned opera DARKLING (2006), with music by Stefan Weisman and a
libretto by Anna Rabinowitz, based on her book of the same name. CD to
be released by Albany Records in 2011.
Read more
DARKLING in Poland
June, 2007
American Opera Projects Presents: DARKLING
Part of New York City Opera's
Music on the Edge:
VOX2007
May 12, 2007
American Opera Projects Presents:
The European Premiere of
DARKLING
June 6-12, 2007
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