Tula (eBook)

Poems

Chris Santiago (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016
119 Seiten
Milkweed Editions (Verlag)
978-1-57131-954-8 (ISBN)

Infos

This will be the fifth selection for the Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry Prize, one of the largest poetry prizes currently offered for a new book

---

A debut poetry collection exploring themes of family and identity while examining the experiences of a second-generation Filipino immigrant in America.Tula: a ruined Toltec capital; a Russian city known for its accordions; Tagalog for "e;poem."e;Prismatic, startling, rich with meaning yet sparely composed, Chris Santiago's debut collection of poems-selected by A. Van Jordan as the winner of the 2016 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry-begins with one word and transforms it, in a dazzling sleight of hand, into a multivalent symbol for the immigrant experience. Tula: Santiago reveals to readers a distant land devastated by war. Tula: its music beckons in rhythms, time signatures, and lullabies. Tula: can the poem, he seems to ask, build an imaginative bridge back to a family lost to geography, history, and a forgotten language?Inspired by the experiences of the second-generation immigrant who does not fully acquire the language of his parents, Tula paints the portrait of a mythic homeland that is part ghostly underworld, part unknowable paradise. Language splinters. Impossible islands form an archipelago across its landscape. A mother sings lullabies and a father works the graveyard shift in Saint Paul-while in the Philippines, two dissident uncles and a grandfather send messages and telegrams from the afterlife.Deeply ambitious, a collection that examines the shortcomings and possibilities of both language and poetry themselves, Tula introduces a major new literary talent.Praise for Tula"e;A book that both transports us and transforms us."e; -Viet Thanh Nguyen"e;A debut collection that is a spare, elegant engagement with language. . . . Santiago's struggles with identity are well-explored, but his linguistic savvy and precision truly stand out."e; -Publishers Weekly"e;Santiago seems to recognize that words will always hold power, even as their meanings evolve. Through everything, Tula delves into these nuances of language: how it is suppressed, how it is weaponized, how it loves, how it informs, and how it is often as fleeting as a birdsong. Tula is therefore a celebration of the ephemeral and the permanent, a lovely testament to the beauty of contradiction."e; -Chicago Review of Books

Autor

lt;DIV>A. Van Jordan is the author of four poetry collections: Rise, which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award; M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, which was listed as one the Best Books of 2005 by the London Times; Quantum Lyrics; and The Cineaste. Jordan has been awarded a Whiting Writers Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize. He is also the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and a United States Artists Fellowship. He is the Henry Rutgers Presidential Professor at Rutgers University-Newark. He lives in Newark, NJ.