{"product_id":"american-radiance-9781496207753","title":"American Radiance","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eWinner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, \u003ci\u003eAmerican Radiance,\u003c\/i\u003eat turnsfunny, tragic, and haunting,reflects on the author’s experience immigrating as a child to the United States fromUkraine in 1991.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e What does it mean to be an American? Luisa Muradyandoesn’t try to provideananswer. Instead, the poems in \u003ci\u003eAmerican Radiance\u003c\/i\u003e look for a home in history, folklore, misery, laughter, language, and Prince’s outstretched hand. Collidingwith the grand figures of late ’80s and early ’90spop culture, Muradyan’s imagination pushes the reader forward,confronting the painful loss of identity that assimilation brings.\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Through generous associative leaps, Muradyan turns a narrative of assimilation into a debut collection that is as playful as it is wrenching. . . . Muradyan reveals herself to be a savvy and thoroughly modern poet, observing her subjects with a dispassionate, often droll eye.\"—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Luisa Muradyan's moving, wonderfully funny first volume of poetry merges an immigrant's passionate study of her adopted culture with Gen-X media obsession. . . . Muradyan is an enormously talented poet.\"—Annette Lapointe, \u003ci\u003eNew York Journal of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Luisa Muradyan's \u003ci\u003eAmerican Radiance\u003c\/i\u003e reflects the complexities of the immigrant experience, and, through humor, pop culture allusions, and lyrical playfulness, highlights the exodus from one's homeland and what it means to assimilate in America.\"—\u003ci\u003ePank Mag\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Luisa Muradyan’s playful, fresh, and tender debut collection shows how a brand-new poetry can be made from many different existing sources. . . . Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Talmud, Madame Bovary, Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī, and the lives of her Russian Ukrainian ancestors. . . . And we feel included too, as she constructs her innovative highways between inner and outer worlds. This is the real stuff of poetry: spontaneous, original, compassionate, and provocative—who knows, maybe the glow of her poems \u003ci\u003edoes\u003c\/i\u003e testify to the stubborn persistence of an American radiance!”—Tony Hoagland, author of \u003ci\u003ePriest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“At once historical, personal, tender, enraged, and aroused, Luisa Muradyan has arrived precisely on time in American poetry. These poems are alive, ecstatic in the earthiest divine sense, lucid where humor blurs with grief, precise when weeping breaks into song. Her force is the force of love, and her voice is unforgettable.”—Kathleen Peirce, author of \u003ci\u003eVault\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In her vibrant debut, the Odessa of Luisa Muradyan’s childhood is magically wedded to an America, brash and colorful as a crazy quilt. These poems, brimming with wild, fanciful juxtapositions, with juicy pop allusions and joyous praise for the overlooked or the mundane, bring the wizardry of Chagall to mind, but the specters of exile, memory, and holocaust also emerge as dark threads woven into the writer’s alert and wondrous world vision. I salute this intrepid new poet’s up-to-the-minute friskiness, unfettered eroticism (“My breasts are like Aristotle and Plato \/ They never see eye to eye”), and quick-witted candor which make \u003ci\u003eAmerican Radiance\u003c\/i\u003e, in all its gorgeous irreverence and reach, such an exhilarating read.”—Cyrus Cassells, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Gospel according to Wild Indigo\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“Odessa, lost city of a lost childhood. America, lost country of the now (as promised by Bruce Willis). \u003ci\u003eAmerican Radiance\u003c\/i\u003e is about searching, and Luisa Muradyan realizes that this is what it is to pray, to allow the search to reveal an invisible world.”—Nick Flynn, author of \u003ci\u003eMy Feelings \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003e Part 1. Psalm for Odessa\u003cbr\u003e If You Were Wondering about the Couple Who Owns the Funeral Home\u003cbr\u003e Schwarzenegger in Prayer\u003cbr\u003e Purple Rain\u003cbr\u003e Clams\u003cbr\u003e Bruce Willis, in the Light\u003cbr\u003e Macho Man Randy Savage\u003cbr\u003e 7:40    \u003cbr\u003e Prodigal Son\u003cbr\u003e Lilies    \u003cbr\u003e Maria Rasputin\u003cbr\u003e The Red Forest, Рыжий лес\u003cbr\u003e Crane    \u003cbr\u003e Resurrection\u003cbr\u003e The Seduction of Masha by Rasputin\u003cbr\u003e Doves\u003cbr\u003e We Were Cosmonauts\u003cbr\u003e Boris    \u003cbr\u003e Marriage\u003cbr\u003e Anecdote\u003cbr\u003e Message from a Peeping Tom\u003cbr\u003e Ornithology\u003cbr\u003e What Is True for Birds\u003cbr\u003e Psalm for Odessa\u003cbr\u003e Part 2. American Radiance\u003cbr\u003e New Eden\u003cbr\u003e Adoration\u003cbr\u003e Raptor    \u003cbr\u003e Translating Ashes\u003cbr\u003e Crane Fly \u003cbr\u003e Rasputin and Alexei \u003cbr\u003e Moscow 1972\u003cbr\u003e Deaf Sonnet, Глухой Сонет\u003cbr\u003e Firefly    \u003cbr\u003e Boot    \u003cbr\u003e Trawler\u003cbr\u003e Spicer’s Promise to Lorca\u003cbr\u003e Spud Love\u003cbr\u003e In the Moonlight\u003cbr\u003e Spilling\u003cbr\u003e Breasts\u003cbr\u003e Into the Blackberry\u003cbr\u003e Records of Failed Weapons of World War II\u003cbr\u003e Rumi in the Mouth of the Snake \u003cbr\u003e Poem for the Man Playing Piano in Front of the Wall of Police\u003cbr\u003e Cremation\u003cbr\u003e This Was His Garden \u003cbr\u003e American Radiance","brand":"University of Nebraska Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49409222082903,"sku":"9781496207753","price":13.29,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781496207753.jpg?v=1730506014","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/american-radiance-9781496207753","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}