Ziggurat

Widely known for his memoir and nonfiction on the Armenian genocide, Peter Balakian is also an accomplished poet, and "Ziggurat" is his first book of poems in nine years. Exploring history, self, and imagination, as well as his ongoing concerns with catastrophe and trauma, many of Balakian's new poems wrestle with the aftermath and reverberations of 9/11. Whether reliving the building of the World Trade Towers in the inventive forty-three section poem that anchors the book, walking the ruins of the Bosnian National Library in Sarajevo, meditating on Andy Warhol's silk screens, or considering the confluence of music, language, and memory, Balakian continues his meditations on history, as well as the harshness and beauty of contemporary life, that his readers have enjoyed over the years. In a sensual, layered, and sometimes elliptical language, Balakian in "Ziggurat" explores absence, war, love, and art in a new age of American uncertainty. "Peter Balakian's "Ziggurat" ingests calamity and dissolves it into almost exhilarating rhythm and image, pushing the language until it feels like it's breaking into something new. The work aims to reveal the human capacity to integrate and, after hard passage, transcend."--Sven Birkerts