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Mark SalernoOdalisque |
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Biographical note: Mark Salerno is the author of Hate (96 Tears Press), Method (The Figures) and So One Could Have (Red Hen Press). Method was a Finalist in the National Poetry Series. From 1993 to 1999, he edited Arshile: A Magazine of the Arts. His work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, First Intensity and Talisman. He is the recipient of a Fund for Poetry award.
BIC Basic EAN13: 9781844713295
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PAPERBACK
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Short
description/annotation: Mark Salerno’s compelling poem sequence interweaves scenes and stories in an intimate soundtrack that sweeps through modern Los Angeles. A cop and a hooker become a “scrivener” and an “odalisque” — a lover and a beloved, who, line by line, scene by scene, reveal their affair in a bitter script that tours the city streets, taking in actresses and immigrants, beauty school students, dreamers and discontents. Sexy, intriguing and expertly realized, this book raids our auditory memory, like cultural outtakes of a dark collective unconscious, and as we listen in and watch the pieces fall perfectly into place.
Main description: Odalisque 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:
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Excerpt from book: Finale
Unpublished endorsement : In this superb new book, Mark Salerno questions the place of value in a world of sequels and simulacra. Odalisque submits repetition to novel, unpredictable forms of renewal—a pantoum of the quotidian. Salerno’s tightly wrought poems probe the interstices between seeming and being, between Hollywood and the stars, between “desire and attendant clamor.” If Ingres had placed his Odalisque on the Sunset Strip, she might be looking at us through these poems. This is a completely original work by a serious, important poet. Michael Davidson
Unpublished endorsement : In Odalisque, Mark Salerno stirs together a bit of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, with a dash of Ted Berrigan, to offer us a feast of intriguing and mysterious poèmes noirs. Shuffling a deck of illuminated ideas, words and phrases, and cloaking the poems in an atmosphere of spoiled romance, urban angst and esthetic longing, Salerno deals out one sonnet after another, each a sure bet. Terence Winch
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