Symbolic gestures feel
bound not by referential expression,
but by mystery and drama. If all
languages are essentially alike,
then softness or firmness is a matter
of tissues in which blood takes a clausal
complement. Taste for etymology,
however, comes from the poetry of
crucial decision making, fruit in one
hand and broad-bladed knife in the other.
A breathtaking cascade of parables, images, lyrics, and aphorisms
Srikanth Reddy
Imperial Nostalgias is the second collection by poet and translator Joshua Edwards. Written in Mexico, China, Germany, Nicaragua, and during a train trip around the U.S. and Canada, the book reckons with itinerancy, innocence, and American privilege, while pointing toward a strange horizon.
Joshua Edwards is the author of Imperial Nostalgias from Ugly Duckling Presse as well as Castles and Islands, Architecture for Travelers, Campeche, and the photobook, Photographs Taken at One-Hour Intervals During a Walk from Galveston Island to the West Texas Town of Marfa. He has also translated Ficticia, a book-length poem by María Baranda. He lives with his family in West Texas and Chicago.
Joshua Edwards escorts us into the desert of the real in his haunting and prismatic second collection, Imperial Nostalgias. Deepening the archaeological excavation—or is it a salvage operation?—of his first book, Campeche, Edwards brushes the dust from the remains of history, desire, and nostalgia itself, to reveal 'ruins as diorama, ruins as sculpture, / birds as music boxes. Everything / moves toward metaphor and dream.' A breathtaking cascade of parables, images, lyrics, and aphorisms, Imperial Nostalgias is necessary work, and required reading for anyone who has felt the cold undertow beneath all beauty. 'Life,' writes this poet, 'is terrible enough without swans.'
Srikanth Reddy
Percy Shelley once famously asserted that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, and Joshua Edwards has accepted this duty with a gentle humility. Edwards hasn't just shown us the shit around the tracks. He's taken us off the beaten path, illuminated both the derelict and the divine, and calls on us all to better the world we inhabit.
Carleen Tibbetts
ISBN: 978-1-933254-86-9
Trade Paperback
Perfect-bound. 96 pp, 5 x 7.25 in
Publication Date: March 01 2013
Distribution: SPD