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ISBN: 9780982359402
Poetry. 6"x8", 120 pages, perfectbound |
Pub date: October 2009 $14 includes shipping in the US ($15 in stores). Order online, below, or click here to order by check. In the Architecture of Bone is the spirit of Armenia streaming through the mnemonic of Semerdjian’s family and their abode. This “evidence” exists by means of its words inscribed on a blank beatific hide. And this hide co-respirates as a biography of exile while lingering in the cells of language. Scenic registrations, interior postings via a vivid singularity. Semerdjian condenses the “undertow” and the droning of the Armenian Diaspora through a stark imaginal thriving. In the Architecture of Bone is a book brimming with marvelous seepage and recollection.—Will Alexander Alan Semerdjian's In the Architecture of Bone reads like a long poem cycle that pulls the reader into an open field in which Semerdjian weaves his explorations of language and art, Armenian history and family. These dynamic poems mingle the ghosts of the past with the pace of contemporary life. This talented, young poet is well worth your reading.—Peter Balakian
The poems shuttle between the tender and the fantastic…at the core of the poetry is a kind of politic—though he isn’t what I would easily call a political poet. Adrienne Rich wrote, “the moment a feeling enters the body is political…” Alan is that kind of political poet.—Michael Klein The poems in this collection are full of lyric’s quiet, overheard voice. They are explorations of relationships and the personal. But [Semerdjian’s] work also constantly points to how lyric has more to tell us about empire and cross-cultural contact than is often realized. He aligns his lyric with the tradition’s more innovative moments. And he frequently turns the personal of lyric inside out.—Ju1iana Spahr About the Author Writer/musician Alan Semerdjian’s poems and essays have appeared in several print and online publications and anthologies including Chain, The Lyric Review, Adbusters, Arson, Ararat, and Diagram. He released a chapbook of poems called “An Improvised Device” (Lock n Load Press) in 2005. His songs have appeared in television and film and charted on CMJ. Alan has performed and read all over North America. He currently teaches at Herricks High School in New Hyde Park, NY and resides in New York City’s East Village. You can visit Alan's website at alanarts.com
Readings & Events 6 November 2009: Amityville, NY 14 November 2009: Huntington, NY 2 December 2009: New York, NY Harbor Mountain Press / GenPop Consortium poets Elena Georgiou and Mario Susko will join Alan Semerdjian for an evening of "hyphenated American poetry."
Reviews from Pedestal Magazine "The Armenian genocide is not taught in the U.S.’s public schools. . . . and not all nations even recognize that it happened. With the exception of Damad Ferit Pasha’s brief postwar government, no Turkish regime has ever acknowledged the genocide. Indeed, the topic is currently a barrier to Turkey’s bid to enter the European Union. . . . I offer this long preamble to my review of Alan Semerdjian’s excellent poetry collection, In the Architecture of Bone, chiefly because of this widespread ignorance and because this book cannot be understood if the reader is unfamiliar, even in passing, with this early modern genocide. Semerdjian’s poetry is, first and foremost, that of the Armenian Diaspora, which still viscerally experiences the aftershocks of this genocide several generations later not only through displacement, but also through the memories that friends, grandparents, and great-grandparents have passed down. . . . These are the memories that Semerdjian chronicles painfully, starkly, magnificently in the book’s 110 pages. In “Grandchildren of Genocide,” for example, he calls to mind the images conjured in most U.S. Americans’ minds when we think of the word “genocide” (the death camps and Nazi gas chambers associated with the Holocaust, mainly) and boldly asks us to expand our understanding by examining these images from all sides in much the same way a cubist does. . . . Note the ingenious use of the word “chambers” not only to mean the gas chambers of concentration camps, but also the limited and limiting mental, linguistic, and imagistic “boxes” into which contemporary people often place the concept of genocide:
While it would be easy and even understandable for an Armenian poet to vilify the people whose ancestors caused so much suffering, in much the same way my own father held an animosity towards Germans until his dying day, Semerdjian bravely tackles this animosity head on—and just as bravely hopes for a way forward. In “History Lesson,” he writes of two lovers, one Turkish and one Armenian, and the linguistic and cultural differences between them in terms both touching and awkward. . . . Semerdjian’s poetry is not only strong in image, line, and form, it is also about an urgent, but customarily unaddressed, issue that affects millions of people daily and which needs attention and careful study in order for any true learning about the prevention of genocide to be achieved. [Click here to read the full review at Pedestal Magazine.]
from Adirondack Review "If a culture could be recreated with words, Alan Semerdjian has built a veritable microcosm of the Armenian lifestyle in his most recent poetry collection, In The Architecture of Bone. . . . an anthropological look at the psychological difficulties his immigrant elders faced after they arrived in America, specifically, their adjustment to suburban life after escaping ethnic cleansing. . . . Semerdjian masterfully reproduces the process of how these memories are suppressed in 'The Grandchildren of Genocide,' but in describing the process of suppression he uncovers the worst memories. . . . In acknowledging the sheer stroke of luck his grandfather had in the face of horror, Semerdjian makes In The Architecture of Bone a tribute to all of the people who suffered because of their ethnicity and applauds the strength of those who continued in their traditions in spite of being cut off from their home lands."
from Armenian Observer October 21, 2009
“I was born here, in a three-bedroom apart/ment overlooking Broadway. Everyone I/ knew to be family lived in that building,” writes Alan Semerdjian in an untitled prose poem in his recently published collection In the Architecture of Bone (GenPop Books 2009). With his images and his rhythms, Alan brings to life a personal world of old-country traditions and family life. His poems take us into the Semerdjian family room where “the women sang stories like gypsies,” and where “my mother …and before that, her mother” read their fortune in a cup of Turkish coffee. Evoked in the poems is a special history, a history of interrupted lives. The references to the 1915 Armenian Genocide and to the grandfather’s memories in the rehabilitation facility in New York of “’the school of orphan’….surrounded by genocide children” do not, however, create a boundary around Armenianness. Alan’s deep sense of what it means to be alive today and his insights into life’s deeper Truths extend the reader’s perceptions to something larger. No specialized knowledge is necessary to appreciate the infinite truth of, “Genocide is…… the quiet forget/ting and/what’s left inside/when the forget/ting/won’t forget.” What inevitably comes through in the 36 poems assembled in the volume is the immediacy of the lived moment. Carefully chosen words and keenly observed details help the reader participate in the poet’s encounters with the world around him. “One blue afternoon I saw my mother spin/her own cup. I remember how she swirled its/insides,loosening the essential fibers at the/bottom, then turned it over. The tiny layer of/thick mud poured into the saucer’s curves. Its/descent was slow and complete; the handle/of the cup, upside down now, looked like an/Armenian nose,” is a moment we share with the young boy who “marked [his] height against the hall/closet door” as the women “read each other’s minds.” Almost always, the present connects to what has happened in the past. “The young in the family couldn’t wait to grow up, their/tongues hanging out for coffee and a lick of/the old country,” is a subtle reference to a lost country, a loss that is further evoked by, “What could she/read in the bottom of that cup of coffee that/she didn’t help write?” The trauma of dislocation is even more forcefully conveyed in the cinquain, “Immigrant”: “I am/in a stolen/and revolted language/not the one invented or born/into.” Ultimately, it is the young poet’s craft, his love of words and feeling for rhythm, that make this debut collection a joy to read. Alan experiments with line and stanza divisions transforming prose sentences into rhythmic verbal pictures. His sensitivity to words, on the other hand, both English and Armenian, and the exploration of their meanings, capture the complexities and the paradoxes of the immigrant experience. “My mother called it soorj, the Armenian/word for coffee. And when she translated it to/me and my American friends, it was Turkish/coffee. It was always Turkish coffee. And it was/easy to remember that way,” he writes in “How Turkish Coffee Got Its Name.” Alan’s precise images also attract our attention, giving us a more intense understanding of what he is trying to communicate. In “Fragments of A Composition with Grandfather” the poet writes of his grandfather, still speechless, trying to remember “the war, his/wife, the world.” “Watch as he forgets everything else: forgets the stained mug of/water in the refrigerator,/the kettle on the flame, his daughter’s name. Watch as he leaves/the door open/in denial, as if his mind might walk through” is startlingly fresh. Alan’s expressions may sometimes elude us but his lines make us think. I pondered long the meaning of “This is how memory invents itself, in the crooked door/ways, in the architecture of bone.” In Architecture a fragmented world achieves cohesion. Rather than made into a terrifying place, the tragedy transforms into a celebration of “the idea of family” invoked in the dedication. The grandfather ”paints to elevate/everything flattened and dry.” The grandson, on the other hand, sings songs which illuminate the mother’s need for “the safety/of home, the hallway, a life/next door to her mother/and father”and, why not, “The shackles of my mother/and all Armenian women” around their sons. Semerdjian fulfills the promise of the epigraph, ”Perhaps it is our function to illuminate some dark corner of the universe” (Gostan Zarian). His poems do indeed deepen our understanding of our own experiences. “Typically, I should know more/than a few words--most Turks know a little/Armenian; most Armenians know a lot of/Turkish--but I wasn’t born there” is a poignant reminder--because so sudden--of the disruption caused by one’s removal from one’s roots.
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