Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Antiquity
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.sarabandebooks.org/all-titles/antiquity-michael-homolka * http://southeastreview.org/contributor-spotlight-michael-homolka/ * https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-homolka-15ba3876 * http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2016/07/book_notes_mich_42.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2015042644
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2015042644
HEADING: Homolka, Michael
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040 __ |a DLC |b eng |e rda |c DLC
053 _0 |a PS3608.O494436
100 1_ |a Homolka, Michael
370 __ |e New York, NY
373 __ |a Bennington College
670 __ |a Antiquity, 2016: |b ECIP t.p. (Michael Homolka) data view (A graduate of Bennington College’s MFA program, he lives in New York City and is currently embarking on a career teaching high school English through the NYC Teaching Fellows program.)
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Bennington College, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Poet and high school English teacher.
AWARDS:Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, for Antiquity.
WRITINGS
Contributor of poems to Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, Minnesota Review, New Yorker, Notre Dame Review, and West Branch.
SIDELIGHTS
Michael Homolka is a poet who has published his work in various literary publications, including the New Yorker, Ploughshares, Antioch Review, and the Threepenny Review. He earned an M.F.A. from Bennington College. Homolka lives in New York City, where he currently teaches high-school English to low-income students through the NYC Teaching Fellows program. His book-length manuscript of poetry, Antiquity, was named a Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry and was a semifinalist in the Crab Orchard, Sarabande, and Zone 3 contests.
Homolka’s 2016 Antiquity collects his haunting and evocative poems spanning history and time, with observations that take the reader from Ancient Greece to Rome, the Holocaust, and modern battlefields like the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. Homolka’s poems set the stage for the irreconcilable, when ancient and postmodern lives are lived simultaneously. He presents time in a cyclical nature, revealing how human beings are skilled in endlessly revisiting horrors on each other. With an ambivalence towards patriarchal legacies, the poems find heroes of ancient Greece and Rome commenting on contemporary war atrocities. Victims succumb to the Black Death knowing the terrible consequences and the historical significance. Historical events, technologies, and beliefs merge to reveal the isolated human qualities that endure throughout time.
Homolka infuses his own family history and Jewish history into his spare poems that discuss the Holocaust and Jewish suffering, as well as Goshen, the biblical land of the exodus inhabited by the Israelites. In one poem, Aryans and Jews confront each other in a common afterlife. Writing in Publishers Weekly, a reviewer commented on Homolka’s craft in writing poetry, saying: “Aware that he is presenting perennial human questions in new imagery, Homolka lets his metaphors do the work.” The reviewer also said that Homolka seamlessly tiles scenes of the past and present, and mixes sorrow and hope across time and place.
Providing the book’s introduction is poet Mary Ruefle, recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and a teacher at Vermont College and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She said the poems abandon themselves to language in a rich, textured, and sustained voice. Evoking darkness and the passage of time, Homolka describes both the fleeting nature of the present and the lingering memories of the past. Calling the poems refreshing and energetic, Library Journal reviewer Barbara Hoffert said: “Clearly the language will be punchy and irreverent.” Hoffert added that Homolka addresses how we live with the burdens of history.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Library Journal, June 15, 2016, Barbara Hoffert, “Summer Poetry,” p. 80.
Publishers Weekly, June 20, 2016, review of Antiquity, p. 131.
ONLINE
Harvard Review Online, http://harvardreview.fas.harvard.edu/ (March 29, 2017), author profile.
Sarabande Books, http://www.sarabandebooks.org/ (March 29, 2017), author profile.
Michael Homolka's poems have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Antioch Review, Boulevard, Parnassus, and The Threepenny Review. A graduate of Bennington College’s MFA program, he lives in New York City and currently teaches high school English to low-income students.
MICHAEL HOMOLKA
Michael Homolka’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in publications such as Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, Minnesota Review, Notre Dame Review, and West Branch. His book-lengthmanuscript has been a semi-finalist in the Crab Orchard, Sarabande, and Zone 3 contests. He lives and works in New York City.
Antiquity
Publishers Weekly.
263.25 (June 20, 2016): p131.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Antiquity
Michael Homolka. Sarabande (Consortium, dist.), $14.95 trade paper(64p) ISBN 978-1941411-27-8
Homolka's alluring debut seamlessly tiles scenes of past and present to create a mosaic that is constantly conscious of the inescapability of time.
The book opens with seven poems named for Goshen, the biblical land of the exodus, but these poems are about the suffering of Jews during the
Holocaust. Homolka mixes sorrow and hope across time and place, with his speaker musing, "I would have to have known history/ not been so
close to it/1 couldn't make sense of it." Thus, the fleeting nature of the present can only be captured in swaths of the past. When "people begin to
think/ about where they might be buried," they look back as the "Poisonous stars wander the sky/ till historians fall off as rags and the dead/ are
no longer counted." Homolka works his own personal experience and perspective into a collective family history, as well as broader Jewish
history. "Everyone here/ is dying to/ arrive at some/ gravely original/ take on things," Homolka writes, "while along/ the edge of the/ lake for
decades/ those remaining/ sit and discuss/ the reflections." Aware that he is presenting perennial human questions in new imagery, Homolka lets
his metaphors do the work so that the craft, not cleverness, shines through. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Antiquity." Publishers Weekly, 20 June 2016, p. 131+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA456344712&it=r&asid=d70ba10c92aad1529c7183a84eb3e5c7. Accessed 5 Mar.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A456344712
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Summer poetry
Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal.
141.11 (June 15, 2016): p80.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Thirteen smart new collections from debut and veteran authors alike
Bell, Josh. Alamo Theory. Copper Canyon. Apr. 2016. 82p. ISBN 9781556593994. pap. $16. POETRY
In poems that look dense but read in a fluid, easy tumble, Bell (No Planets Strike) offers characters and scenarios that border on the surreal ("no
one's getting/ off this tractor alive, no one without/ a pod of vanilla, Stuck like a witch's/ finger in the throat") yet are grounded in everyday
discontents ("Apologies/ to the inhabitants of the condo/ next to my condo"). The observations are arresting and almost witty, almost wry, and a
character named Josh occasionally wanders along to engage with others. Fittingly, voice (and the voice box) feature thematically, as reading this
work is like listening raptly to a verbose, intensely smart friend expatiate on life. VERDICT Both serious and entertaining, this collection could
draw even those who don't typically read poetry.
* Boruch, Marianne. Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing. Copper Canyon. Jul. 2016.108p. ISBN 9781556594915. pap. $15. POETRY
Only a poet as accomplished as Boruch (Cadaver, Speak) could make such beautiful verse while leading us through the everyday, of life's subtle,
steady shiftings ("the bird's hunger, seeking shape"). If the opening image of a pool filled with cruelly dredged up roses bespeaks quiet assent ("I
stood before them the way an animal/ accepts sun"), the next poem turns immediately to progress (and hence progression) as a modern invention
beyond the heaven-and-hell alternatives; finally, the poet concedes, "I lose track of my transitions." In fact, transition defines us. Here, a static
painting gives way to "between and among," a simple typeface never yields a perfect copy, and even in a medieval score, two exquisite quavers
are connected by a slur. VERDICT Highly recommended.
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Cruz, Cynthia. How the End Begins. Four Way. Mar. 2016.92p. ISBN 9781935536673. pap. $15.95. POETRY
A troubled persona haunts Cruz's moody, atmospheric collection (after Wunderkammer), battling fatigue and foreboding ("Cords of voices are
unspooling inside my head"). But crystalline, assuredly cool writing removes the risk of maudlin self-pity. The danger here is multifaceted and
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often metaphysical; childhood haunts, winter descends in a white shriek, hospitals figure frequently, and trauma in one early poem ("What I want
is to become// What I was/ before the accident") shifts in the next to higher ground ("making myself// Safe from the wound-/ licked accident// Of
having ever/ met you"). VERDICT Fine portraiture of a mind wrestling with itself in a dark world, this meditative work will be especially
appreciated by poetry fans but is accessible to all.
Homolka, Michael. Antiquity. Sarabande. Jul. 2106.64p. ISBN 9781941411278. pap. $14.95. POETRY
"Everywhere in heaven's meadows/ Aryans jack each other off." So opens this debut collection's first poem, "Goshen," whose title references the
region of ancient Egypt inhabited by the Israelites. Then it's a quick spin through Homolka's spare, sculpted lines from the collection of Jews'
permits to the six-day war to "emaciated lovers" receiving stars from the backs of chariots. Clearly, history, and particularly Jewish history, will
be the topic of this Kathryn A. Morton Prize winner, and clearly the language will be punchy and irreverent. How do we live with the burdens of
history? "It isn't like that Horace Life stresses us out," says one poem in response to the classic poet's placidity; else where, "I can't write off the
gamey/ smell of events." VERDICT Refreshing, energetic work; many readers will enjoy.
Lee, Corinne. Plenty. Penguin. (Poets). Jun. 2016. 144p. ISBN 9780143108177. pap. $20; ebk. ISBN 9781101991886. POETRY
In her second collection, National Poetry series winner Lee (PYX) takes Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass as inspiration for a fierce and
propulsive cri de coeur about contemporary violence visited on both humans and the environment. Hindu dancers, Mojave saguaro, death in
childbirth, the Navajo Long Walk, Kristallnacht, the Ho Chi Minh trail, DDT, deformed frogs, and the proclamation, "I want love/ but fear/ it
won't erase/ enough ozone/ from the fresh lightning strike" surface in the first 20 pages alone. Like crackling pine cones, Lee's sharp images
splinter and spill down the page in urgent, disjointed phrases; those who prefer the comfort of neat stanzas won't be at ease with this headlong
dash. But this is brave, solid work. VERDICT Important for sophisticated readers.
Martens, Amelia. The Spoons in the Grass Are There To Dig a Moat. Sarabande. Apr. 2016. 64p. ISBN 9781941411230. pap. $14.95; ebk. ISBN
9781941411247. POETRY
In this affecting volume of prose poems, a debut collection after a string of chapbooks, Martens moves from the beautiful, imperfect moments of
domesticity ("And the apology I made for you came from a willow tree. From a lemon. From some mud I found in the living room") to issues of
global urgency ("A man says a bomb doesn't have to be big; ... an explosion of any size is enough"). Often, as she waxes intimately philosophical,
Martens embraces both family and the political; in the lovely poem "Dear Brian Turner," to her daughter's comment that the soldier poet looks
sad, she says, "I mentioned nothing about shrapnel, white space, or how it is to be inside yourself inside the dark." VERDICT An accomplished
start-up from a poet to watch.
Notley, Alice. Certain Magical Acts. Penguin. (Poets). Jun. 2016. 144p. ISBN 9780143108160. pap. $20; ebk. ISBN 9781101991879. POETRY
This far-ranging new work from Notley, a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winner, opens in a dreamscape ("I couldn't sleep in my dream..../ Distortion's
all that I know") and unfolds in a stately, reflective manner to become an indictment of the disaffected contemporary world. The speaker, who
initially appears as a sort of go-between, even a prophet and leader, in a mythopoetic kingdom of shades, regrets our lack of connection. "We
weren't always singular," she says. "Democracy isn't efficient, and the only politics I recognize lies between us." It's as if Notley is trying to find
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and reframe the concept of community as she sweeps through history and consciousness, with results that are ever polished but sometimes
ponderous. VERDICT Important work from a leading poet, though not for beginners.
Oswald, Alice. Falling Awake Norton. Aug. 2016. 80p. ISBN 9780393285284. $25.95; ebk. ISBN 9780393285291. POETRY
In this new collection from T.S. Eliot Prize winner Oswald, life is seen as a continual tumbling downward. Rain "rises to the light and falls
again," while elsewhere "clouds close their options and the whole// melancholy air/ surrenders to pure fear and/ falls." A fly falls stunned at the
window, a badger falls "like a suitcase" to the shovel, and night falls "as if dropped from a great height." If precipitation permeates these pages
(because the author is British?), there's less a sense of dank than edgy foreboding. Even the local village appears less quaint than sinister, and
several fable-ike poems have a Grimm feel: "Three people in the snow/ getting rid of themselves/ breath by breath// and every six seconds a
blackbird." VERDICT With the sparkle of black jewels; for all poetry fans.
* Rivard, David. Standoff. Graywolf. Aug. 2016. 88p. ISBN 9781555977450. pap. $16; ebk. ISBN 9781555979416. POETRY
James Laughlin Award winner Rivard (Wise Poison) here finds himself in midstream, mediating on "What's left?" The feel is not, however, of
resignedly looking backward but of thoughtful recalibration. The collection opens, "I miss myself most/ these days with friends" and ends "here
we go again, full speed ahead." In between, in well-crafted, cleanly ringing poems, the poet reflects on his father's dying, recalls beloved authors,
reveals the smarts not to discourage a friend's enthusiasm, declares "that a little foolishness/ goes a long, long way, I'd say;/ a lot drops dead/ in its
tracks," and, in the title poem, headily embraces what's "baffling, vast, elemental,/ hopeful, & threatening/ as that--but different." VERDICT So
what's left? Wise, graceful poems for all readers.
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* Sharif, Solmaz. Look. Graywolf. Jul. 2016.96p. ISBN 9781555977443. pap. $16; ebk. ISBN 9781555979409. POETRY
Destruction radius. Collateral. Distressed person. Language can be so drained of emotional content that we're safely distanced from the reality
behind it. But in these raw, unsparing poems, Rona Jaffe Award winner Sharif closes the gap, making language itself the issue as she investigates
the consequences--particularly for herself and her family--of America's invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq ("My life in the American/ Dream is a
DOWNGRADE"). Chillingly, Sharif often splices in phrases taken from the U.S. Department of Defense's Dictionary of Military Terms ("Ladies,
bring your KILL BOX, Boys, your HUNG WEAPON. You will push WARHEAD MATING to the THRESHOLD OF ACCEPTABILITY"), and
we learn how thoroughly war and the refugee's flight permeated the consciousness. VERDICT Highly recommended.
Taylor, Tess. Work and Days. Red Hen. Apr. 2016.72p. ISBN 9781597097321. pap. $11.95. POETRY
As winner of an Amy Clampitt Fellowship, Taylor (The Forage House) spent a year living rent-free in a Berkshires cottage to pursue her writing.
She refreshed herself by volunteering on a nearby farm, and here she chronicles the cycle of work ("we bow into the rows that winter tore") that
drew her so close to the earth. Even as she makes us acutely aware of the obdurate thereness of nature ("mulching garlic: muck is heavy"), we
feel her muscles singing. Tellingly, Taylor weaves in references to the nature poetry of the great classic poets while also making parallels to the
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human body and the larger world ("You try to dislodge faulty friendship, miscarriage:/ in the distance, war drones.") VERDICT in-the-field
poetry many readers will enjoy.
* Vuong, Ocean. Night Sky with Exit Wounds. Copper Canyon. Apr. 2016.70p. ISBN 9781556594953. pap. $16; ebk. ISBN 9781619321564.
POETRY
Vuong was named one of this year's Whiting Award recipients, and this debut collection (his chapbooks include Burnings, an American Library
Association (ALA) Over the Rainbow selection) shows why. The language is painfully, exquisitely exact, the scenes haunting and indelible. Born
in Ho Chi Minh City in the late 1980s, Vuong can reignite scenes from his country's recent traumas; as Saigon falls, "Milkflower petals in the
street/ like pieces of a girl's dress" drift over the dead and injured, and the city lies "so white it is ready for ink" ("White Christmas" really played
on the airwaves at the time). Elsewhere, the pain and glory of young love and young life emerge ("Show me how ruin makes a home/ out of hip
bones ...// teach me to hold a man the way thirst// holds water"). VERDICT Highly recommended.
Waldman, Anne. Voice's Daughter of a Heart Yet To Be Born. Coffee House. May 2016.160p. ISBN 9781566894388. pap. $17; ebk. ISBN
9781566894395. POETRY
In her ambitious new work, veteran poet Waldman (The lovis Trilogy) celebrates an ascendant goddess perhaps reluctant to arrive, perhaps
representing a necessary transcendence ("There is, O daughters, an unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, unformed. Were there not, ... there would be
no escape from the world of the born"). She's the bat kol of Judaism and Christianity, "the daughter of a voice, ... a heavenly voice that proclaims
God's judgment" and the hatif of the Arabs, "that calls/ to lost travelers in the wilderness." She's the voice, then, of conscience and salvation that
has echoed throughout Waldman's engaged work. When, in a protean rush of lines linked not by syntax but context, Waldman cites "a poetics of
ecstasy/ template for literary intervention" she's defining her own fiery aesthetics. VERDICT Classic Waldman, but opening a new window.
Barbara Hoffert is Editor, Prepub Alert, LJ
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hoffert, Barbara. "Summer poetry." Library Journal, 15 June 2016, p. 80+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA455185424&it=r&asid=89d8bd714b3d5d2361e125479c3c6661. Accessed 5 Mar.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A455185424