The New Babel: Toward a Poetics of the Mid-East Crises evokes and investigates—from a Jewish American perspective and in the forms of poetry, essays, and interviews—the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, America’s involvement as both perpetrator and victim of events in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and the multiple ways that poetics can respond to political imperatives. The poems range from the immediately lyrical to the experimental forms of the “Apple Anyone Sonnets” series, which relies heavily on the Arabic but has Shakespeare as its scaffolding. In the essays, Schwartz calls on the power of poetry—and of some of the great poets in the Arabic, Jewish, and American traditions—to help rethink the battle lines of the contemporary Mid-East, with the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber looming large. The interviews provide Schwartz’s discussions with Israeli poet and activist Aharon Shabtai, political philosopher Michael Hardt, and the late, great American poet Amiri Baraka. In these creative, analytical, and conversational moments, Leonard Schwartz rethinks the battle lines of the contemporary Middle East and calls on the power of language as the essence of our humanity, endlessly fluid, but also the source of an intentional confusion there is a necessity to counter.
Poetry. "Intricate in its intelligence, lyricism, truth and intimacy, Leonard Schwartz's HEAVY SUBLIMATION offers us incandescent maps where the mind explores the nature of its own materials, its attempt and architecture of meaningfulness. Chiseled by craft and thought, the result of this collection achieves a wild, symphonic philosophy of poetics that is, at once, humorous and profound. Schwartz writes, 'The amorous world makes contact / With the conservative world / And is killed by it, makes contact / With the liberal, and is killed again. / In its next rebirth the amorous seeks / No world but itself -- and dies, forever.' Bridging Schwartz's cosmos is a leap of illumination, oblivion, ecstasy, and courage. Beyond the ordinary forms of our complicated world HEAVY SUBLIMATION has provided us with extraordinary revelation: 'Because the heart's desire to be faithful / To the infinity of love / Programs an impossible colossus...Because dread of the next word / Is an emotion without name.'"--Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Cultural Writing. Middle Eastern Studies. This hand-sewn chapbook contains three parts: 1) in which the Israel poet Aharon Shabtai offers witness. 2) in which a publishing vision emerges from teh rich sources mingling in Jerusalem. 3) a verse essay on poetic form in America by Leonard Schwartz that argues responsibility is the responsibility to respond. Leonard Schwartz argues forcefully for a poetics of publishing that crosses boundaries of language and difference (in this instance Arabic and Hebrew, Palestine and Israel).
While climate change is no laughing matter, the human condition, especially as a trigger for global warming, is ripe for lampooning with psycho-social satire. Set in Florida, ground zero for climate crisis, this angsty collection of seven short stories-and a preface, too-infuses absurd satire and dark humor into postmodern, cautionary tales of horror, science-fiction, fantasy, and social dysfunction. The stories represent a tropical storm of social chaos and climate crisis that touches on the ludicrous, representing small-town eccentricity and featuring a whirlwind of mutating humans, manatees, iguanas, and enlightened cows, as well as hurricanes, genetically-modified corn, weeds gone-wild, methane gas, pesticide, nuclear-power plants, egg people, government ineptitude, and a few Florida crackers, rednecks, and hicks. Also featuring Judd Jugmonger, the author's protagonist of his other works, . Climate fiction from the mind of Jay Leonard Schwartz, a native-Floridian, self-confessed dadaist-at-large, and author of the novel, O Little Central Florida Town of Bedlam. Pick up this book and get blown away. It will make you think twice about climate crisis!
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