Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

ONE
History, Bitterness
Tung Lai Shun
Ode to the Douduk
Waiting for a Number
Summer Ode
Yellow Lilies
Outside Arshile Gorky's Studio
Revenant Love
Watching the Tulips Die
Purple Irises
Shadow Grid
Grasses of Unknowing
How Much I Love You

TWO
Eggplant
Quince
Bulgur
Pomegranate
Matza
Fig
Walnut
Apricot
Grape Leaves
Tomatoes
Okra
Zucchini

THREE
No Sign

FOUR
Stalled in Traffic
Head of Anahit/British Museum
Coming to Istanbul
Leaving the Big City
Walking the Ruined City
Notes

About the Author

Peter Balakian is the author of eight books of poems including Ozone Journal, which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and Ziggurat, both published by the University of Chicago Press. His memoir Black Dog of Fate won the PEN/Albrand Award and was a New York Times notable book, and The Burning Tigris won the Raphael Lemkin Prize and was a New York Times bestseller and New York Times notable book. He is Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English at Colgate University.

Reviews

"Balakian understands the bewildered music of our times, and No Sign, more than any other contemporary book of poetry, teaches us about the properties of time; we are inside the speech that is addressing time and opposing it, witnessing it, and walking two steps ahead. This 'time-sense' is explored with depth in the brilliant title poem. Balakian is able to praise the world though he knows its 'bitter history.' And praise he does! The lyricism here is of utter beauty. No Sign is a splendid, necessary book." -- Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic "Balakian has been writing intellectually challenging poems of 'bright unbearable reality' that are part of an ongoing conversation in American poetry for some time. They have the horizontal continuum of history, like Walcott and Heaney, but they also have verticality which arrests time and connects with the demonic and divine. He masterfully does the thing nobody else does which is to derange history into poetry, to make poetry painting, to make painting culture, to make culture living, and with a historical depth that finds the right experience in language." -- Bruce Smith, author of Spill "In No Sign, Balakian embraces the claims of immediacy as well as the encompassing historical perspective. His images and sharp syncopations locate the pulse of our times and give it a prophetic reverberation. Here is a voice of witness which also makes room for an irrepressible sensory imagination." -- Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age