Lemur

by Andra Rotaru

Poetry. Art. Dance. Translated by Florin Bican. LEMUR speaks of the grotesque and mutable grace of the body. LEMUR scalds the page and, in so doing, proposes a bold choreography--one of dis-membering and re-membering the human into a new species. In this space, and on this stage, charges of abundance, overflow and fear electrify a milky symbology. The humor of LEMUR is one of sinister relationality, sheer proximity, mutability--a dwelling-in-waste. This dwelling reminds us that our bodies already relate to one another in waste, and that what we long for--to be discarnate--is futile. On the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein , Andra Rotaru's English-language debut fuses the lyric gesture with a Gothic science fiction which bends and distorts syntax and hierarchy, opening up an ethical horizon of "a body in delay / foretelling a body unformed."

Genres: Poetry

84 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Brian Alarcon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lemur seems to me to be the cause of a performance and its acts, movements and dances.
There are a lot of parts of it which I can envision as a performance, but the language of the book
also suggests multiple locations, reasonings, thoughts, abstractions, and many other factors that
would be difficult if not impossible to stage. For example, in the poem Malaise on page 48, the
image is in the realm of not-possible, since it is set in a grassland, and there is a poetic
abstraction that would be difficult to clearly show in a performance: “his eyes will thus rest.”
Yet, I see this poem as still possible to embody, as the action is the most important: the speaker
turns the Lemur’s head when he is sick towards something beautiful/ calming.
This is the case with most of the book. The images are not meant to be performed or
staged, and they live solidly in the realm of poetry, yet the actions force me to embody the poem,
beyond what is possible. Like in the poem on page 61, did they stage this with multiple dancers
pulling the main one’s hair? Probably not. This pushes me to engage with the poem not as an
image –multiple people pulling on someone’s hair– but rather as an embodied experience: a
single person on the ground getting their hair pulled. Rotaru allows her poetry to take the shapes
it needs to, go to any place, or have as many people as necessary, without becoming a pictorial
story, the way a movie might be. Rather, her language stays firmly in the realm of embodied
performance, where the reader isn’t supposed to see these poems, but experience them.
I see this book relating to the theme TEXT AS BODY/BODY AS MEDIUM in the way it
uses the body as the central focus of its storytelling. As opposed to getting a story told through
what happened when and where and how, we get the actions of the story and the bodies reacting
to the narrative. It’s as if we were reading a book written by a body that is disconnected from a
brain, a body that can still hear and see and think, but it doesn’t do so for the sake of
rationalization, rather it is interested in the specifics of what the body experiences in a story. This
is not a text about the body, rather it is told through the body, if the body was blind and deaf to
the semantic needs of the brain.

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think to have read this book without witnessing the ekphrasia to be paired alongside is an injustice, and so my reading of it is incomplete. In its incompletion, I don't feel capable of giving it its fair or intended opinion.

[Ioana · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nu am relaționat deloc cu această carte