The Blighted Starfruit: poems and translations

Abstract

Starting and ending with travel, The Blighted Starfruit collects the poems of a writer working through his apprenticeship. The writer explores the limits of prosody and literary precursors in search of a manner and company his voice can press up against. The initial section collects the manuscript's shorter lyric poems, culminating in a series, 'Enigma Variations,' unified by form. The following section consists of translations from Haizi. The collection ends with 'Riverwolf,' a piece that renders the excursive nature of this poet's mind into the form of a long poem. If the writer's manner can be characterized around the notion of travel, it is a travel that defines itself as a middle state where departure and arrival co-exist. The work at hand displays a student's efforts to come into a particular sensibility by trying to figure his self--body, mind, and experience--within the landscape of whom he's read.