Press release: "The title poem of Peter
Balakian's Ozone Journal is a
sequence of fifty-four short
sections, each a poem in itself, recounting the
speaker's memory of excavating the bones of Armenian genocide victims in the
Syrian desert with a crew of television journalists in 2009. These memories
spark others—the dissolution of his marriage, his life as a young single parent
in Manhattan in the nineties, visits and conversations with a cousin dying of
AIDS—creating a montage that has the feel of history as lived experience.
Bookending this sequence are shorter lyrics that span times and locations, from
Nairobi to the Native American villages of New Mexico. In the dynamic, sensual
language of these poems, we are reminded that the history of atrocity, trauma,
and forgetting is both global and ancient; but we are reminded, too, of the
beauty and richness of culture and the resilience of love.
from Ozone Journal
Bach’s cantata in B-flat minor in the cassette,
we lounged under the greenhouse-sky, the UVBs hacking
at the acids and oxides and then I could hear the
difference
between an oboe and a bassoon
at the river’s edge under cover—
trees breathed in our respiration;
there was something on the other side of the river,
something both of us were itching toward—
radical bonds were broken, history became science.
We were never the same."
Peter Balakian (born June 13,
1951), American poet and nonfiction writer. Balakian was born in Teaneck, New
Jersey, and grew up there and in Tenafly, NJ. He attended Tenafly public
schools and graduated from Englewood School for Boys (now Dwight-Englewood
School) before earning his B.A. from Bucknell University, an M.A. from New York
University, and a Ph.D. from Brown University in American Civilization. He has
taught at Colgate University since 1980 where he is currently Donald M. and
Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the department of English,
and Director of Creative Writing. He was the first Director of Colgate’s Center
For Ethics and World Societies.
He is the author of five books of
poems, most recently [before Ozone
Journal] June-tree: New and Selected
Poems 1974-2000. The others are Father
Fisheye (1979), Sad Days of Light
(1983), Reply From Wilderness Island
(1988), Dyer’s Thistle (1996), and
several fine limited editions. His work has appeared widely in American
magazines and journals such as The Nation, The New Republic, Antaeus, Partisan Review, Poetry, and The Kenyon Review; and in anthologies
such as New Directions in Prose and
Poetry, The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets, Poetry’s 75th
Anniversary Issue (1987), The
Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry, and the four-CD set Poetry On Record 1886-2006 (Shout Factory). Balakian is the author of the memoir Black Dog of Fate, winner of the
PEN/Albrand Prize for memoir and a New York Times Notable Book, and The Burning
Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response, winner of the 2005
Raphael Lemkin Prize and a New York Times Notable Book and New York Times and
national best seller. He is also the author of Theodore Roethke’s Far Fields (LSU, 1989). His essays on poetry,
culture, art, and social thought have appeared in many publications including Art In America, American Poetry Review, The
Chronicle of Higher Education, The American Quarterly, American Book Review,
and Poetry. Balakian’s prizes and awards
include a Guggenheim Fellowship; National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship;
Emily Clark Balch Prize for poetry, Virginia Quarterly Review 2007; Movses
Khorenatsi Medal from the Republic of Armenia 2007; Raphael Lemkin Prize, 2005
(best book in English on the subject of genocide and human rights); PEN/Martha
Albrand Prize for Memoir, 1998; Anahid
Literary Prize, Columbia University Armenian Center, 1990.
Balakian has appeared widely on national
television and radio: ABC World News Tonight, The Charlie Rose Show, Terry
Gross’s “Fresh Air”; NPR’s “Weekend Edition,” CNN, C-SPAN, Celeste Quinn’s
“Afternoon Magazine,” “Literati,” (BRAVO Canada, PBS, New York City); WAMC, New
York, Leonard Lopate’s WNYC, and others.
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Maryfrances Wagner has taught creative and academic writing for over twenty years, taught workshops at all levels, served as President of The Writers Place and is currently chair of TWP Programming Committee and board secretary for KC Creates. She is co-editor of I-70 Review and co-edited Whirlybird Anthology of Greater Kansas City Writers. She has published six collections to include Salvatore's Daughter, Red Silk (Thorpe Menn Book Award winner for literary excellence), Light Subtracts Itself (A KC Star Notable book of the year), and Dioramas. She has edited or co-edited three anthologies and also served as co-editor of New Letters Review of Books.
