Parasitic Oscillations

Poems

Parasitic Oscillations
Madhur Anand
RRP:
NZ$ 37.00
Our Price:
NZ$ 28.86
Paperback
h216 x 140mm - 96pg
22 Mar 2022 CAN
International import eta 7-19 days
9780771099410
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"Anand' s attention to and ability to evoke explicit, exponential beauty in scientific and natural form are simply stunning. . . . Anand' s debut is in every measure a triumph. " -Publishers WeeklyA stunning new collection of poems that examine various aspects of living and practicing as both a poet and scientist in the Anthropocene during a time of unravelling. The poems in Madhur Anand' s second collection interrogate the inevitability of undesired cyclic variation caused by feedback in the amplifying devices of both poetry and science. There are several interacting currents- the poet' s own work between the arts and the sciences, living between North American and Indian cultures, as well as examining contemporary environments through the lag effects of the past. Weaving in a close reading of A. O. Hume' s The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds (1889), anti-colonial, intertextual, feminist, electronic, and diasporic relationships are examined against the backdrop of unprecedented ecological collapse. Here, birds are often no longer direct subjects of metaphor, but rather remain strange, sometimes silent, a kind of menacing and stray capacitance, but can still act as harbingers of discovery and hope. Fluctuating through extreme highs and lows, both emotional and environmental, while examining a myriad of philosophical and ethical dilemmas, Parasitic Oscillations is an enlightening, thought-provoking, and profoundly beautiful work that both informs and questions.
Advance Praise for Madhur Anand and Parasitic Oscillations "Lyric poets from many regions, traditions, and cultures have long dreamt of making the human voice approach the condition of birdsong. In Parasitic Oscillations, Madhur Anand approaches this literary problem from a wholly different angle, making birdsong her object of study with the precision and amplitude of an environmental scientist working on mathematical models of avian behavior in complex ecological systems. By the end of this innovative collection, the most ancient and universal metaphors for poetry-as song, as flight-are made new through Anand' s aesthetic research into global intimacies of the human and the nonhuman alike. ' There are very few things / that are stronger when they are far apart,' writes Anand. Perhaps poems can sing their song, too. " - Srikanth Reddy, professor and author of Underworld Lit "Parasitic Oscillations traces a ' path travelling back to a higher dimension . . . formant and filtering. ' This is a pathless path, crenallated by ' live' edges, industrial memory, and the time crystals of colonial (and anti-colonial) artifacts that refract beyond their capacity to be restored. Madhur Anand has written a book that attends to an on-going ' vanishing' with brown clarity, in the cardinal, ever-fluxing space between ' the actual and the desired. ' " -Bhanu Kapil "The poems in Madhur Anand' s Parasitic Oscillations track a variety of losses with all the rigor and care of her scientific training. She segues seamlessly from the loss of bird species, to the loss of a motherland and a mother, to the loss of presumed safety during the pandemic. A reader may feel a series of trap doors opening beneath her feet. This is a new, more inclusive and global eco-poetics where we too are specimens. As she warns at the end of one segment: ' Tag yourself. ' " -Rae Armantrout, Pultizer-prize winning author of Conjure "In the formally inventive Parasitic Oscillations, Madhur Anand, once again, makes scientific inquiry both intimate and vital, but ' There is a more inner view,' within, as well. This is a tour de force of life and one of the greatest long poems, ' Slow Dance,' that I' ve ever read, period. In this collection of evidence of what is seen and of what is lived, we have a poet at the top of her game. Anand offers the brilliance of the learned and of the lived, of the curious and of the accomplished. And, yes, there' s the music of the birdsong, which Anand-lyrically, generously-offers as a soundtrack to show us how to fly. This is some soulful, beautiful work. " -A. Van Jordan, professor and author of The Cineaste "Anand' s Parasitic Oscillations: pheasant feathers and Maxwell' s equations, imagination and analysis, metaphor and fact, sideways glance of a poet and direct gaze of a scientist, beauty and beauty. " -Alan Lightman, professor and author of Einstein' s Dreams "I devoured this book in a two-hour sitting, fascinated by the way Madhur Anand writes about the nineteenth-century egg and bird research collections of A. O. Hume. Anand visited natural history museum research collections in the U. S. and U. K. as well as field sites in India. She writes into mathematical simulations of birdsong and talks back to letters and diaries kept by A. O. Hume. The songs and feathers and flight patterns and habitats of extinct and extant bird species flutter through these pages, and Anand' s own life (and, perhaps, our own) is in these pages too. Parasitic Oscillations is a fascinating medley of science, philosophy, and art. " -Orion Magazine Praise for Madhur Anand and A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes: "Anand' s exquisitely crafted debut poetry collection combines scientific, observational, socially conscious, haunting and reflexively personal, and almost Romantic strains into a cohesive, captivating whole. . . . [A] seemingly effortless, deeply humanist sleight of hand. . . . Anand' s attention to and ability to evoke explicit, exponential beauty in scientific and natural form are simply stunning. . . . Anand' s debut is in every measure a triumph. " -Publishers Weekly "In Madhur Anand' s poems the ancient false dichotomy between art and science collapses, and does so with such grace, wit, and elan you' d think this had been its purpose all along. These poems are alive with the potency of their own hybrid attentions-rapt, nimble, and capable of unlocking the energies asleep in eco-scientific jargon as well as popular culture and the poet' s Indian heritage. Here is a writing full of linguistic and conceptual verve, essential reading for all of us interested in poetry and the ecological arts. " -Don McKay, Griffin Poetry Prize-winning author of Lurch
DR. MADHUR ANAND is the author of the experimental memoir This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart, the poetry collection A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes, and several other literary works published in national and international literary magazines. She is a professor of ecology and sustainability at the University of Guelph, where she was appointed the inaugural Director of the Guelph Institute for Environmental Research.
Status: Indent title, imported to order
ISBN-13: 9780771099410
Published: 22 Mar 2022
Published In: Canada
Imprint: McClelland & Stewart Inc.
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Inc
Format: Paperback
Height: 216mm
Width: 140mm
Spine: 7mm
Weight: 136g
Pages: 96

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