{"product_id":"balakian-peter-ozone-jour","title":"Balakian, Peter: Ozone Journal","description":"\u003cp\u003eUniversity of Chicago Press (paperback, 2015)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: from \"Ozone Journal\"\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBach's cantata in B-flat minor in the cassette,\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ewe lounged under the greenhouse-sky, the UVBs hacking\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eat the acids and oxides and then I could hear the difference\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ebetween an oboe and a bassoon\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eat the river's edge under cover--\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003etrees breathed in our respiration;\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ethere was something on the other side of the river,\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003esomething both of us were itching toward--\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eradical bonds were broken, history became science.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWe were never the same.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40679352991767,"sku":"9780226207032","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/products\/7899535-L.jpg?v=1697661930","url":"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/products\/balakian-peter-ozone-jour","provider":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","version":"1.0","type":"link"}