Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the 2008 Brittingham Prize in Poetry, selected by David St. JohnFrom tumult to catharsis, the poems in Philip Pardi’s first collection, Meditations on Rising and Falling, explore the emotional tug-of-war that is the human experience. Present at every turn are people searching for meaning and sense in an elusive world: a doorman who plans to punch the senator who never speaks to him, a son who discusses ornithology with his father’s dying friend, a roofer who copes with his past as he senses his imminent fall to the ground. While the poems are witness to the turmoil of both body and soul, they are not without hope. Pardi finds grace in noise, and happiness in the mourning doves, showing us that often, the reasons for disbelief become precisely the reasons for belief. Pardi’s collection is a testimony to faith and resistance in a world where “falling is the given.” Winner, Award for Poetry and Literary Criticism, The Writers’ League of Texas Finalist, 2008 Norma Farber First Book Award, Poetry Society of America
Review
“A truly exceptional volume of poems. Wry, wise, and powerful, this work offers highly nuanced sketches and shrewdly observed scenes of profound human reckoning. With a child’s awe and an adult’s caution—and compassionate care—the speaker in these calm and elegantly philosophical poems wins our trust time and time again. The measured, lyric ease of these poems is matched only by their superb tonal complexity and masterful, celebratory ease.”—David St. John, Brittingham Prize Judge
Review
“While Philip Pardi’s poems are lithe and imaginative, the real pleasure here is his willingness to dwell on an idea or feeling, to examine the familiar in a manner that is both gentle and startling.”—Bob Hicok, author of Animal Soul and The Legend of Light
Synopsis
Oedipus at Colonus is the third in Sophocles' trilogy of plays about the famous king of Thebes and his unhappy family. It dramatizes the mysterious death of Oedipus, by which he is transformed into an immortal hero protecting Athens. This was Sophocles' final play, written in his mid-eighties and produced posthumously. Translator David Mulroy's introduction and notes deepen the reader's understanding of Oedipus' character and the real political tumult that was shaking Athens at the time that Sophocles wrote the play. Oedipus at Colonus is at once a complex study of a tragic character, an indictment of Athenian democracy, and a subtle endorsement of hope for personal immortality.
As in his previous translations of Oedipus Rex and Antigone, Mulroy combines scrupulous scholarship and textual accuracy with a fresh poetic style. He uses iambic pentameter for spoken passages and short rhymed stanzas for choral songs, resulting in a text that is accessible and fun to read and perform.
About the Author
Philip Pardi has published poems in Gettysburg Review, Seneca Review, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere, and his work has been reprinted in Best New Poets 2006 and Is This Forever or What? Poems and Paintings from Texas. A former Michener Fellow at the Michener Center for Writers, he now lives in the Catskill Mountains in New York and teaches at Bard College.