Empire of dreams

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Empire of dreams

Giannina Braschi ; translated by Tess O'Dwyer ; with an introduction by Alicia Ostriker

Yale University Press, c1994

Other Title

Imperio de los sueños

Uniform Title

Braschi, Giannina -- Imperio de los sueños

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Note

"This book is based on a work originally published in Spanish as El imperio de los sueños by Giannina Braschi, 1988."

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Straddling the line between fiction and poetry, Empire of Dreams speaks of Puerto Rican poet Giannina Braschi's love affair with New York City-her imagined social, political, erotic, and linguistic relationships to the place that has acted as a magnet to Puerto Ricans for so many years. The work deals with issues of performance, gender ambiguity, and marginality. It is concerned with the boundaries of language and the possibilities of cross-dressing poetry as commercials, diary, tabloids, gossip, confessions, videos, autobiography, musicals, and manifesto. Characters turn into other characters. Clowns, buffoons, shepherds, lead soldiers, magicians, madmen, witches, fortune-tellers, and artists perform their fantasies in the city streets. An antinovel within the book satirizes the writer's role in the modern age and calls for a revolution of poetry. New York City becomes the site of liberation for its marginal citizens, as the narrator is led through a seeming phantasmagoria of internal and external trials in order to experience the center-of political power, of meaning, of feeling, and of personal identity.

Table of Contents

  • Part 1 Assault on time. Part 2 Profane comedy: dedication and warning - book of clowns and buffoons
  • poems of the world of the book of wisdom
  • pastoral or the inquisition of memories
  • song of nothingness
  • final manuscript
  • epilogue. Part 3 The intimate diary of solitude - death of poetry
  • rosaries at dawn.

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

  • NCID
    BA24425256
  • ISBN
    • 0300057954
  • LCCN
    94000648
  • Country Code
    us
  • Title Language Code
    eng
  • Text Language Code
    eng
  • Original Language Code
    spa
  • Place of Publication
    New Haven
  • Pages/Volumes
    xxi, 219, [1] p.
  • Size
    22 cm
  • Classification
  • Uniform Title ID
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