Ozone Journal
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Bach’s cantata in B-flat minor in the cassette,
we lounged under the greenhouse-sky, the UVBs hacking
at the acids and oxides and then I could hear the difference
between an oboe and a bassoon
at the river’s edge under cover—
trees breathed in our respiration;
there was something on the other side of the river,
something both of us were itching toward—
radical bonds were broken, history became science.
We were never the same.
The title poem of Peter Balakian's Ozone Journal is a sequence of fifty-four short sections, each a poem in itself, recounting the speaker's memory of excavating the bones of Armenian genocide victims in the Syrian desert with a crew of television journalists in 2009. These memories spark others—the dissolution of his marriage, his life as a young single parent in Manhattan in the nineties, visits and conversations with a cousin dying of AIDS—creating a montage that has the feel of history as lived experience. Bookending this sequence are shorter lyrics that span times and locations, from Nairobi to the Native American villages of New Mexico. In the dynamic, sensual language of these poems, we are reminded that the history of atrocity, trauma, and forgetting is both global and ancient; but we are reminded, too, of the beauty and richness of culture and the resilience of love.
Peter Balakian
Peter Balakian is the author of Black Dog of Fate, winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for Memoir and a New York Times Notable Book, and June-tree: New and Selected Poems 1974–2000. He is the recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. He holds a Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University and teaches at Colgate University, where he is a Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities.
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Reviews for Ozone Journal
13 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Pulitzer Prize winning collection of poetry that is well worth all the acclaim. These poems are dripping with history and a vast array of geographical settings. But what is most distinguishing is the tight construction and the unique and personal subject matter that the author brings to light. The title of the book is based on the longest ,poem in the book but most are a comfortable 1 -3 pages. Based on his poetry I will certainly check out the author's memoir and other writings.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Peter Balakian is a very talented poet. My most favorite poem in this book was Here and Now. Even Ozone Journal was, too, a good long poem.
Book preview
Ozone Journal - Peter Balakian
PETER BALAKIAN is the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities and professor of English at Colgate University. He is the author of seven books of poems, most recently of the critically acclaimed Ziggurat, also published by the University of Chicago Press. His memoir Black Dog of Fate won the PEN/Albrand Prize and was a New York Times Notable Book, and The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response was a New York Times best seller and a New York Times Notable Book.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2015 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2015.
Printed in the United States of America
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-20703-2 (paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-20717-9 (e-book)
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226207179.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Balakian, Peter, 1951– author.
Ozone journal / Peter Balakian.
pages ; cm. — (Phoenix poets)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-226-20703-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-20717-9 (e-book)
I. Title. II. Series: Phoenix poets.
PS3552.A443O97 2015
811'.54—dc23
2014016859
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).
PETER BALAKIAN
Ozone Journal
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Chicago & London
for ASKOLD MELNYCZUK
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
ONE
Name and Place
Pueblo 1, New Mexico
Pueblo 2, New Mexico
Pueblo, Christmas Dance
Joe Louis’s Fist
Hart Crane in LA, 1927
Providence/Teheran, ’79
Warhol/Mao, ’72
Baseball Days, ’61
TWO
Ozone Journal
THREE
Here and Now
Slum Drummers, Nairobi
Leaving Aleppo
Near the Border
Finches
Silk Road
Home
Notes
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to the editors of the magazines in which these poems, sometimes with different titles, first appeared:
Agni: "Near the Border,
Slum Drummers"
Boston Review: "Hart Crane in LA, 1927"
Carolina Quarterly: section 33 of "Ozone Journal (as
Waking/West End Ave./1983")
Colorado Review: "Pueblo, Christmas Dance"
Consequence: "Name and Place"
Harvard Review: "Providence/Teheran ’79"
Massachusetts Review: "Silk Road"
New Letters: "Home"
Ploughshares: "Pueblo 1, New Mexico"
Saveur: section 12 of "Ozone Journal (as
Breakfast in Aleppo")
Southwest Review: "Pueblo 2, New Mexico"
Tikkun: "Joe Louis’s Fist"
Virginia Quarterly Review: section 45 of "Ozone Journal (as
Kinda Blue")
"Hart Crane in LA, 1927" also appeared on Poetry Daily (poems.com).
"Warhol/Mao, ’72" appeared in Poems and Their Making: A Conversation, ed. Philip Brady (Lanham, MD: Bucknell University Press, 2015).
"Here and Now" was published in a broadside limited edition of 100 by Andrew Rippeon at the Press at Nine-Mile Swamp, Clinton, NY.
"Silk Road" was reprinted in Poetry Daily, April 7, 2013.
With thanks to JB, SB, DLF, DSL, ML, AM, ALM, RP, WR, BS, TS, and to Yaddo, Robert Garland, and Mary Beth Kelly for sanctuaries to write.
One
NAME AND PLACE
1.
Balak in Hebrew (devastator)—King of Moab
son of Zippor (sparrow), meaning he who was always running away
into the desert as the Israelites were fast on his back.
Angry, humiliated, full of vinegar and sap,
looking for the diviner.
2.
Balak (in Turkish, eccentric variant) meaning baby buffalo—
something forging Anatolian rivers,
Armenian fossil of the word, flushed downstream.
3.
Who drowned wading in the