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| VS. (Paperback - New) |
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Full blurb:
With this prolific and resourceful poet, you never know what’s going to happen next. Oprava’s themes may be familiar – love, desire and disappointment; childhood and the domestic life; time’s depredations and missed opportunities; death – but his treatments of them are quirky, startling or downright surrealist.
His sophisticated command of language is matched by an instinct for rhyme, rhythm and word play. He is a master of the haibun (a Japanese form in origin, fusing haiku and haiku like prose), taking it boldly where it has never been before. There is genuine innovation in this book, which can be said of very few poetry collections. His is a confident, critical American voice, which even in its bleaker observations beguiles the reader with its lightning wit and wry humour.
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First page first lines:
From ‘Segue’
Discombobulated
prone, alone, facing up,
errant wafts of aerosol lilies
and I,
having used up every organ
and passing on the post mortem,
wonder, who chose the music?
Goddamnit, I said when I was dead
I wanted a feast in a field
with pissed people pissing around
swilling whiskey to the dulcet sounds
of Bobby Gentry and the Grateful Dead,
instead, I have Mozart, Chopin, Brahms
and some poor bastard I can’t even name:
I would’ve preferred Wagner, loud.
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Category: Poetry collection
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Author: David Oprava
David E. Oprava interviews himself:
BOOK: So, Dave, why did you write me?
DO: I had to.
BOOK: What do you mean, you had to?
DO: I was scared of what would happen otherwise.
BOOK: Oh please, other people do macrame or knitting or trainspotting, did you really have to write a book?
DO: Yes.
BOOK: So what am I about.
DO: Struggle, mostly against oneself, life, drinking, raging against it all. Hence the name, VS., meaning verses, or versus.
BOOK: Ohhhh, aren't we melodramatic?
DO: No.
BOOK: So who were your greatest influences?
DO: The Beat poets and Bashô.
BOOK: You don't talk much, do you?
DO: I do, just not to you.
BOOK: Why is that?
DO: Believe me, I lived you, think I want to go back there?
BOOK: Good point, sometimes I just feel nasty, dirty and low, other times amazing, how is that?
DO: It's called being human.
BOOK: But I'm not, I'm a book.
DO: You're more human than most books.
BOOK: Is that true?
DO: Sadly, yes.
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Publisher: erbacce-press
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Reviews:
VS. (as its title suggests) is muscular and headlong. [It] is a journey through and within non-academic forms of 20th and 21st century poetry, creating on its way, new slip roads and off-ramps. VS. is – to steal the English title of Bashô’s most famous travelogue Oku no Hosomichi – the narrow road to the interior – a road less travelled by more cowardly poets – let’s be thankful David E. Oprava had the guts to set foot on that road.- Steve Finbow, 3:AM Magazine . To read the full review of VS. at 3:AM, go here.
"VS. is a look at harsh reality. Humorous at times. Simplistic events expanded by sounds and space. Clashed with subtle surprises. VS presents a look at life/death and the things in between, from simple car rides to marriage and children. Every single word is a subtle moment, hanging on fate, born to delight."- Mary Woodbury, editor Jack Magazine
"No reader or critic could fail to warm to this poet who so jovially offers up his own flesh and then bustles about making sure our glasses are full of something strong. This volume is Generous. There are two main courses of poems offered up. Some are observations of some bad shit going down in our world: domestic violence, endless mindless war, global warming etc done in spoken-word style with a Kerouac flash. These are balanced by the more introspective revelations. Both are tasty, but the latter linger longer. "- Marcy Chong – reviewer for the SPS Alumni Horae
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| Book code: BTD018 |
| Price: GBP £ 7.00 |
| USD $ 13.00 |
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