Labors Lost Left Unfinished: Poems

by Ed Pavlić

Book by Pavlic, Ed

Paperback

First published November 1, 2006

About the author

Edward M. Pavlić

Reviews

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ed Pavlic's poetry always requires attention, and time; Labors Lost is probably his most demanding book. The center is in the slippages of work and domestic life, the reaching for a way to "talk about all the things that aren't/ things that make humans/say crazy things to themselves/ to keep from going crazy. It's either that or we go on/ like this, as if we didn't know/ that hell's a world where we have nothing left/ of ourselves, that is of hell,/ to add." As in his debut, Paraph of Bone, Labors is infused with jazz rhythms, in this case complicated by a fair number of references to modern visual arts.

There's no easy route in, but my favorite poems include "Diamond Blade," "Searh Party Between Enemy Lines For Downed Flight 411 Or Hunting Dream with Rainer Maria Rilke"--long titles will be a hallmark of Pavlic's poetry from here on--; "Marxist on Ecstasy & the History of the Red Eyes: Nose Wide Open in the Jet Stream on 'The Night We Called It a Day"; "Basics Did You Say Basics?" and the searing domestic sequence "Dinnertime," "Sundown in Ile-Ife,"' "Elatery," "Faith in a Curved Line" and "'Crying Blues For the MatreD Champion Judo Marble Player & Material Witness: Vishnu's Symphony of Strappado & Bastinado: Confession Under Detrainment of an Indefinite Term."

The titles give you a sense, but only a sense of what's in play.