"The Baboons of Hada" introduces thirty years of Eric Ormsby's precise and generous poetry. Opening with an exuberant bestiary of spiders and starfish, penguins, snakes and contemplative baboons, the collection moves on to explore a world of intricate wonders and memories: the grandeur of noses, the mayonnaise tornado whipped up by a kitchen whisk, the gossip gravediggers whisper to the dead. An American childhood and kinships are evoked with loving particularity, alongside a flamboyant caliph, Lazarus and his disenchanted wife, and the great medieval Arab poet al-Mutanabbi writing in exile lines that reverberate across 'all the empty places' of the world. Cover image: engraving on paper of real and fantastic animals (detail), Florence c. 1460-70. Copyright A(copyright) The Trustees of the British Museum.
- ISBN10 1847778313
- ISBN13 9781847778314
- Publish Date 25 August 2011 (first published 27 May 2011)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Carcanet Press Ltd
- Format eBook
- Pages 120
- Language English