heliophobia - Paperback

by Saba Syed Razvi (Author)

heliophobia, a collection of poems, opens with a Nereid on the verge of death, closes somewhere between the orgiastic rapture of a rave and an ecstatic experience of midnight meditation, and pivots on conflicting cultural perspectives - one embracing in revelry the tangible darkness of the night and the other racing in fear from beneath its shadow toward the light. The book provides a space in which culture, myth, and archetype can reconfigure their manifestations, allowing Goya, Houdini, Kali, Anais Nin, Pessoa, Emily Dickinson, Freud and the Mad Hatter and others to cast their selves throughout the moving circles in a shadowy cast of characters across time and continents. As the poems make their way through dream images, ideologies, and reinventions, the foremost question becomes that of the center and where it is, whether it can be reached, or if it even is. A resulting whirl propels the reader through goth-rock refrains and mantric prayers, incantations and phantom confessions, into an underground freefall exploring the textures of shadow and the consequences of light.