Description
Book SynopsisOdalisque employs the lyric poem to achieve a complicated and layered narrative. It is, on the surface, the story of an L.A.P.D. bomb squad detective who falls for a street hooker. This transgression leads to his dismissal from the force, but it is only one of many instances in the book of “stepping over the line.” There is also the story of a “scrivener” and an “odalisque,” which is interleaved with the cop’s story and is simultaneous with it. Indeed, it seems as if there are the same story, read as palimpsests of each other. The events are not so much set in Los Angeles as imbedded in it, because the city, with its free-floating mythologies of fame, immigration, identity, and transformation, are central to the tale. However, in Odalisque, the mythology does not match up with the reality, and the characters find themselves strung up “between seeming and being.” The book reads as one long poem presented in 14-line panels or tableaux.
Table of Contents
- Argument
- Sense
- Summertime
- Vernacular
- At Large
- Orange Crush
- Now This
- Iota
- The Orange Dress
- Skirt Consideration
- To My Far
- So Do I
- In An Age
- Around
- Offered
- Collection
- Gaze
- Day For Night
- Depot
- It Was Not
- Wah-Wah
- A Retrospective
- Still
- Soliloquize
- Before She Could
- Simultaneous
- Helping Uncle
- Tethered
- Solipsism
- Capping
- Estimate
- What I Was
- Wagons West
- Fascination
- No Matter What
- The Ideal and the Other
- The Big How-To
- Finale
- Heart
- Eyes Up
- Generous
- Statement
- After All
- Extended Viewing
- Some People
- Pennant
- Interview
- In Hours
- Accessory
- Lights Out
- Lie to Me
- Trouble No More
