Unanimal, Counterfeit, Scurrilous (Poetry)

- Blurb -

"His is either a well-oiled universe or a chaos huddled together. . . he' s a mannish character, unanimal, counterfeit, scurrilous. "Unanimal, Counterfeit, Scurrilous is a work of wild erudition and rococo elaboration, a collection of poems that loosely channels the dynamic of desire and inhibition in Thomas Mann' s novella Death in Venice. The poems follows the trajectory of the ageing Aschenbach' s pursuit of youth and beauty, transmuting his yearning and resistance into jittery flirtations with longing, decay and abandonment against a backdrop of political violence. The poems have an exuberant candour, formed by polyphonic allusions which enact the intersectionality of the speaker; by turns melodramatic, flirtatious, satirical. Like the tragic protagonist of Death in Venice,Cayanan' s collection manifests a longing for extroversion sabotaged by its own will. It is a queer performance of anxiety and abeyance, in which the poems' speakers obsessively rehearse who they are, and what they may be if finally spoken to. ' An effusive yet metaphysical performance of ' unfinishable selves' . . . with deft use of allusion, allegory and mythic structures, Cayanan' s prepossessing new book is frequently revelatory: In truth, when life happens, it happens in the fourth person. ' - Toby Fitch