Solarium

by Jordan Zandi, Henri Cole (Foreword by)

Overview

"Solarium is a completely original gem of a book."—Henri Cole, from the foreword

Bowl of the lake. Bowl of the sky.
Bowl of the lake with the sky in it.

You looked at you in the water.

The blizzard is cold.
And the boy in the blizzard is blue.

Jordan Zandi grew up in the rural Midwest, and in 2011 graduated with an MFA in poetry from Boston University, where he was the recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship to Bolivia. His poetry has appeared in the New Republic and Little Star.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941411179
Publisher:	Sarabande Books
Publication date:	02/09/2016
Series:	Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry Series
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Jordan Zandi: Jordan Zandi grew up in the rural Midwest, and in 2011 graduated with an MFA in poetry from Boston University, where he was the recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship to Bolivia. His poetry has appeared in The New Republic and Little Star.

Table of Contents

Foreword Henri Cole

I

On Stepping off the Train 1

On My Path Life 2

From a Bridge 3

The Gift Horse 4

The Flavor Suite 5

Solarium 7

Epic 11

In the Opposite Rooms 12

On My Painting Life 13

II

River 17

Adjustments 18

Le Monde Familier 19

An Island Journal 21

On My Pool Life 23

Chamber Music 24

Acrylic I 26

Etch-a-Sketch 27

Vector 28

Halls, Then Banquet 29

On My Pony Life 30

III

The Circus in Winter 33

Quarry 39

Snow Children 43

All Around the Garden of the Gods 44

A Lesson in Botany 45

Last Beach Motel 49

On My So-Called Life 50

Inside 51

On My Plane Life 53

Riddle 54

Transparencies 56

At the Sign of the Skull 57

Green Gingko 58

In the Forest 59

A Curiosity 60

Place 61

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

01/18/2016
Zandi’s debut collection radiates a fragile warmth in what proves to be an aching and uncommonly ingenious exploration of youth and memory. Like Wallace Stevens, Zandi delights in riddles, anecdotes, and mysterious landscapes; his colorful scenes suggest more than they explain. Unlike Stevens, however, the presiding imagination here is naive, even childlike. “I wish my heart was as big as the world/ but bigger,” Zandi writes in the title poem, in which he wonders, “what good is a life that wears away?” Indeed, despite their precocious sensibilities, many of Zandi’s poems lament childhood’s distance. In the almost painfully earnest “River,” the poet tries “to turn back toward” an adolescent friendship, but finds that “Outside,/ the cars rush past, through the glass sounding nothing like water.” In “The Circus in Winter,” the speaker refuses poetic artifice in favor of plainspokenness: “Our silos—No, they are nothing/ but silos. Very good for storing.” These moments of plainness, where the poet struggles to make sense of the past, are especially powerful alongside the collection’s more oblique (and uneven) fantasias. “Closer, little memory,” Zandi writes in “Etch-a-Sketch,” “what did you find/ on your treasure hunt?” Zandi’s poetry sometimes feels slight, self-involved, or saccharine, but it also has a distinct sensibility, and the book features a number of truly imaginative poems. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Best Poetry of 2016, The New York Times

"Zandi’s mellow, sometimes deliberately goofy lines (“As loud as cats — and happiness!”) can almost fool you into missing the agile intellect that makes this one of the year’s strongest first books."
—The New York Times

"A first book made eventful by the weirdness and clarity of Zandi’s mind. Poetry is like solitaire: we go to it to pass the time. Zandi reminds us that passing the time is a very serious activity. His balletic inner life belies the gravity at its core."
—The New Yorker

"Zandi’s debut collection radiates a fragile warmth in what proves to be an aching and uncommonly ingenious exploration of youth and memory."
—Publishers Weekly


“Solarium is a completely original gem of a book. I have never met Jordan Zandi, but I would like to, for there is a sweet spirit haunting his guileless poems. His inner world is always interacting with the outer world, and as a result everything seems to be shining.”
—Henri Cole, author of Middle Earth



Best Poetry of 2016, The New York Times

"Zandi’s mellow, sometimes deliberately goofy lines (“As loud as cats — and happiness!”) can almost fool you into missing the agile intellect that makes this one of the year’s strongest first books."
—The New York Times

"A first book made eventful by the weirdness and clarity of Zandi’s mind. Poetry is like solitaire: we go to it to pass the time. Zandi reminds us that passing the time is a very serious activity. His balletic inner life belies the gravity at its core."
—The New Yorker

"Zandi’s debut collection radiates a fragile warmth in what proves to be an aching and uncommonly ingenious exploration of youth and memory."
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher