Ozone Journal by Peter Balakian

Ozone Journal

By

  • Genre Poetry
  • Released
  • Size 756.48 kB

Description

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.

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.

More Peter Balakian Books

  • VQR: Spring 2010

    VQR: Spring 2010

    Peter Balakian, Edward Falco, J. Malcolm Garcia, Albert Goldbarth, Kevin Hart, Edward Hirsch, Chris Hondros, Dimiter Kenarov, Mary Beth Lineberry, Michael David Lukas, Erika Meitner, Jason Motlagh, Louie Palu, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Patrick Phillips, Paisley Rekdal, Kate Ringo, Tadeusz Różewicz, Joe Sacco, Matthew Shaer, Neil Shea, Guy Smallman, Craig Morgan Teicher, Paul Theroux, Brian Turner, C.K. Williams & Elliott D. Woods

    Politics & Current Events

  • Black Dog of Fate

    Black Dog of Fate

    Peter Balakian

    History

  • The Burning Tigris

    The Burning Tigris

    Peter Balakian

    U.S. History

  • Ozone Journal

    Ozone Journal

    Peter Balakian

    Poetry

  • June-tree

    June-tree

    Peter Balakian

    Literary Fiction

  • No Sign

    No Sign

    Peter Balakian

    Poetry

  • The Ruins of Ani

    The Ruins of Ani

    Krikor Balakian, Peter Balakian & Aram Arkun

    History

  • Vise and Shadow

    Vise and Shadow

    Peter Balakian

    Literary Criticism

  • Ziggurat

    Ziggurat

    Peter Balakian

    Poetry

  • A Slant of Light

    A Slant of Light

    Peter Balakian

    Literary Criticism