RaveChicago Review of BooksWith the new translation of Solo Viola: A Post-Exotic Novel, Antoine Volodine inhabits the operating theater of the apocalypse. It’s a classic example of his post-exotic project. And there is alchemy in the night of surrealism. It’s dangerous to characterize the writing of Antoine Volodine because he so intentionally self describes writing ... [Solo Viola is] a novel with many clear modernist antecedents, articulated in a post-exotic voice ... the tension persists between the oneiric, the fleeting idealism, memories, childhood stories, the buoyancy of the absurd, against the interrogation of a damning authority ... Volodine’s post-exoticism deploys strategies for survival and reclamation. Through his dark ciphers, he finds a guiding light.
Daniel Borzutzky
RaveChicago Review of BooksBorzutzky’s language reflects the politics of his content; he is a contemporary poet of the lyric. His poems are spoken. He employs an open field of referents that expands outwards. Themes emerge within the field, folds. The poet’s voice has echoes of Waldman and Olson ... It’s essentially a way of working through the violence that’s persistent today, while still trying to acknowledge a specific terrible act of violence ... And he argues that social movements that value the liberation of Black, Brown, and Jewish people work to liberate the broader society. Valuing human lives is the first step to becoming a less violent society. This collection is part of an expanding practice. It’s critical and ambitious, most damning in its understatement and reflection.
