Voyager"Srikanth Reddy's Voyager unwinds at a hypnotic pace, as inexorable as a set of philosophic propositions, yet also strangely porous, like poetry. Gradually we come to understand words spoken by Escher in the poem, 'formal objectivity / might be / a personal matter,' but by then it's too late: we're hooked. It's is a work unlike any other, deeply moving, disturbing, and ultimately fulfilling."—John Ashbery "In 'erasing'—three times, and in an astonishing variety of poetic styles and verse forms—In the Eye of the Storm, the memoir of Kurt Waldheim, the noted Secretary-General of the UN who, after a decade in office was exposed as having been a Nazi SS officer, Srikanth Reddy has produced one of the great political poems of our time. Using, abusing, recycling, and reformatting Waldheim's own words, Voyager does what no "original" history poem could do: it exposes 'Waldheim's Disease' as much more than one individual's particular mendacity. Read it and weep—but also marvel at Reddy's bravura performance!"—Marjorie Perloff, author of The Vienna Paradox "Our greatest task (all imaginative) is to rid ourselves of the disastrous twentieth century by finding one single gift we can salvage from it. It is the task that Reddy sets himself in this strange, beautiful meditation on Voyager 2, and World War 2. The secret hope is hidden as if in a cloud of stars."—Fanny Howe, author of The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation |
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