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Sightseer in This Killing City

Part of Penguin Poets

Author Eugene Gloria

Paperback

$18.00 US

Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Books

5.47"W x 8.44"H x 0.31"D (13.9 x 21.4 x 0.8 cm) | 5 oz (136 g) | 24 per carton

On sale Jun 04, 2019 | 112 Pages | 9780143133841

Sales rights: World

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A fourth collection from a prize-winning poet whose "gift is breathtaking" (Naomi Shihab Nye)

Eugene Gloria's Sightseer in This Killing City captures the surreal and disorienting feelings of the present. In the wake of recent presidential elections in the United States and in the Philippines, Gloria's latest collection sharpens his obsession with arrivals and departures, gun violence, displacement, cultural legacy, and the bitter divisions in America. Through the voice of Nacirema, the central persona of the collection, we are introduced to a character who chooses mystery and inhabits landscapes fraught with beauty and brutality. Gloria quotes melodies from seventies soul and jazz, blending the urban lament of Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane with the idiom of Stevie Wonder and Fela Kuti. Sightseer in this Killing City is an argument for grace and perseverance in an era of bombast and bullies.

IMPLICIT BODY

Of my self-creation is this legend
of my betrayals, my disloyalty to my origins.

Of my once and future past,
of rajas and gilded palaces,
of brown sailors building empires, I lay no claim.

I lay no claim to your founding fathers,
no claim to pearl divers and tattooed pirates
jumping ship to grow a colony in Louisiana.

What I’ve inherited is this feeding frenzy
for rainbow, rainbow, rainbow,
this multigenerational spectral light show

inducing a diarrhea of bullets; and no arrests.
I’m the youngest son of a youngest son,
a second baseman in the minor leagues,

a family trope deputized to react
and bleed—whose only compensation
is his own capacious longing.

Hand me your gun, America,
and let my body be the soundtrack
to the spectacle of our recent events.

If only this miasmic island of sundown
towns and Bible colleges, of folksy neighbors
with their hiya doin’ gestures and holding
keys to the kingdom come raining down
with molten rocks upon this megalomania

of abandoned cities, of cowslip turnips, of holy
JesuschildrenofAmerica, of thee I sing!

Call me Mr. Gone / who’s done made / some other plans.
All that remains is nostalgia
and this aching torso of blue.

Advance praise for Sightseer in This Killing City:

"Jazzy, surreal, neon-lit, Gloria's new poems describe a culture of violence in the Philippines and especially America." —The New York Times Book Review, "New & Noteworthy"

"Sightseer in This Killing City continues [Gloria’s] themes of family, silence, and wonder, but his poetry has evolved into an even more deft lineation: original phrasings, unique imagery, and lasting emotions. Gloria is full of surprises . . . We get the sense that [he] can write about anything, and can do it well—a rare gift." —The Millions

“Considered, beautiful and nimble. . . In [Sightseer in This Killing City], there is an exquisite, erudite, yet plain-spoken care with language from a poet well-read across continents and centuries . . . It is a continuing pleasure to dwell in the worlds, and work, that [Gloria] has wrought.” —Anisfield-Wolf.org

"Gloria employs a fastidious agglomeration by, for example, drawing together postmodern Spanish architecture, nineteenth-century French poetry, 1970s English rock, and everlasting Portuguese longing, all in a single poem! . . . A seriously outstanding collection." —Booklist

"In the tradition of Whitman and the Beats, Gloria’s 'discourse of bleeding utterances' memorably charts cities, countries, and his own family." —Publishers Weekly

“Empires crumble and the dust continues to contaminate the land, the air, our bodies, and our conscience. What a blessing to have Eugene Gloria help us reckon with the troubled histories that shape America, the Philippines, and every point in between. If the broken world had a musical score, it would thunder like the disquieting poems in Sightseer in This Killing City.” —Rigoberto González

“These fast-paced narratives are cacophonous and unsettling. But first and foremost, they are tales that praise ordinary people. Their stories sing out to the reader with heart-rending vividness. This book is a rough and sleepless journey told by a tourist who keeps arriving at a Goon Republic but never stays. A fascinating read.” —Marilyn Chin

Praise for Gloria’s last collection, My Favorite Warlord:

“A lively, fast-paced third book . . . Gloria establishes himself as a poet of memory, of masculinity, as well as of Asian-American political identity . . . [and sets] himself confidently against injustice, in favor of inquiry, amid the eclectic language of contemporary scenes.” —Publishers Weekly

“Gloria's collection, a meditation on his late father and a lyric memoir of 1967, when he was ten years old and emigrated with his family from the Philippines to San Francisco, touches on issues of heritage, identity and memory.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Eugene Gloria was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in San Francisco. He was educated at San Francisco State University, Miami University of Ohio, and the University of Oregon. His first collection of poetry, Drivers at the Short-Time Motel, was selected for the 1999 National Poetry Series and also won the Asian American Literary Award. Gloria is also the recipient of a Fulbright Research Grant, a Poetry Society of America award, and a Pushcart Prize. He teaches at DePauw University and lives in Greencastle, Indiana. View titles by Eugene Gloria

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