Ecstatics
by Norman Lock

Description

It is always exciting to publish a new work by Norman Lock! In Ecstatics, in a hundred brief, poetical pieces, where place and time are as various as Tunisia in 1453, North China in 1632, Istanbul in 1912, or Treblinka in 1943, Lock enacts a fierce instant when, as may be, “a sail, in a fragile accord with shifting wind and ripening light, flame[d] into ecstatic being on the Nile” or “a mind overthrown by immensity and the unblinking contemplation of emptiness exulted in an anarchy of birds.” Ecstatics is a compendium of visions of humankind’s marvelous and tragic history, as well as a dazzling speculation concerning the secret languages written by our most urgent obsessions.