Poetry. "Rauan Klassnik's HOLY LAND is not a book for the faint of heart. His poems--dreamlike fables that conflate the domestic and quotidian with...
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May 28, 2008
Needleroozer
rated it: 
The author of this book contacted me through Goodreads and asked me if I wanted a copy. I said sure.
Unfortunately, I don't really understand the poems included in this book. They are all short, no more than a few line, written more like paragraphs than poems.
These poems make me think of dreams, bad dreams, the weird, dark, disturbing bad dreams I start having in summer when my bedroom gets too hot at night. These poems make me uncomfortable in the same way heat induced More...
Unfortunately, I don't really understand the poems included in this book. They are all short, no more than a few line, written more like paragraphs than poems.
These poems make me think of dreams, bad dreams, the weird, dark, disturbing bad dreams I start having in summer when my bedroom gets too hot at night. These poems make me uncomfortable in the same way heat induced More...
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Jun 20, 2008
Juliet
rated it: 
4 3/4 stars.
I've read the first four (out of five) sections and am finding it really good and powerful and poised on the brinks of moments and scenes that document beauty & ugliness, awe & horror, and human & cultural detritus enshrined--like little monuments erected in the midst of chaos.
I really like his juxtapositions.
Now I've just finished it. The fifth section reminded me a little of Joe Wenderoth's 'Letters to Wendy's', which is not to suggest it wasn't More...
I've read the first four (out of five) sections and am finding it really good and powerful and poised on the brinks of moments and scenes that document beauty & ugliness, awe & horror, and human & cultural detritus enshrined--like little monuments erected in the midst of chaos.
I really like his juxtapositions.
Now I've just finished it. The fifth section reminded me a little of Joe Wenderoth's 'Letters to Wendy's', which is not to suggest it wasn't More...
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(2 people liked it)
Feb 11, 2008
Reb
rated it:
An aggressive prose poem collection you can both love and hate at the same time.
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(4 people liked it)
Sep 25, 2008
Dan
rated it:
I'll round up, to 5 full stars, from a 4.5 star rating. This review is a response I made to another reader's comments:
Klassnik's work is nothing if not orginal, and as a fan of his orignality, I'm actually very pleased with Chantel's review, especially where she writes that "the poems make me think of dreams, bad dreams, the weird, dark, disturbing bad dreams I start having in summer when my bedroom gets too hot at night."
That Klassnik's poems discomfit her in More...
Klassnik's work is nothing if not orginal, and as a fan of his orignality, I'm actually very pleased with Chantel's review, especially where she writes that "the poems make me think of dreams, bad dreams, the weird, dark, disturbing bad dreams I start having in summer when my bedroom gets too hot at night."
That Klassnik's poems discomfit her in More...
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(2 people liked it)
Sep 10, 2008
Shaindel
rated it:
Rauan Klassnik's prose poems in Holy Land are a treat--each one a surreal journey of its own. I'll paste one of my favorites here:
I’m on a cloud floating by and I’ve gone mad but madness flows away in a tall shining work of Art and I’m standing in front of a fountain and the world’s ringing down through me and there are no fields of migrants mixing hair and bone into concrete. Trucks lined up and ready. Cups of cold coffee, a Rolex and a crucifix. A girl on a payphone begging.
More...
I’m on a cloud floating by and I’ve gone mad but madness flows away in a tall shining work of Art and I’m standing in front of a fountain and the world’s ringing down through me and there are no fields of migrants mixing hair and bone into concrete. Trucks lined up and ready. Cups of cold coffee, a Rolex and a crucifix. A girl on a payphone begging.
More...
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(2 people liked it)
Apr 16, 2008
M
rated it:
Simply put, Holy Land is a treat: an intense and pleasurable read. If, like me, you find your reading interrupted by guests, you may be tempted to hold a grudge. The world presented in Klassnik’s poems is familiar, but possessed of such intense beauty and horror that it seems strange—sometimes a place of indescribable wonders, others a bleak and cruel joke played on its inhabitants. In this world, “God breathes in your mouth and licks between your toes till your eyes roll back. Then he takes
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(2 people liked it)
Mar 03, 2009
Some of the best prose poems I've read in a long time. Visceral and, eschewing abstraction or self-reflexiveness, unrelenting. These aren't lazily surreal prose poems, where a normal situation slowly starts getting, inevitably, weird. Nope, Rauan inducts you immediately into a world where thin margins separate things--sex hovers over death, violence bursts out of laughter.
Can you believe it: a man, woman, and child all reduced to bones in the stomach of a shark. She laughed and she More...
Can you believe it: a man, woman, and child all reduced to bones in the stomach of a shark. She laughed and she More...
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(1 person liked it)
Jun 10, 2009
CAConrad
rated it:
Prose poetry is something that's SO TRICKY, at least in my opinion. How to keep it poetry in the prose is the trick, and sometimes I feel that a lot of books saying that they're prose poetry are really flash fiction, and I KNOW I KNOW that it's a fine line. It being a fine line is my point.
But anyone wanting to GET the prose poem REALLY SHOULD read this book!
All the magic encapsulated in sudden, blasting epiphanies, rolled out before you in the form of the prose poem. More...
But anyone wanting to GET the prose poem REALLY SHOULD read this book!
All the magic encapsulated in sudden, blasting epiphanies, rolled out before you in the form of the prose poem. More...
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(2 people liked it)
Apr 01, 2008
Jack
rated it:
I enjoyed this book very much. My friend Clay told me it would be good, and he is almost always right, but in this case he was wrong; it was great. Cliché? Yes I am cliché, but the book isn't, and I am going to read it again, which is rare with poetry for me.
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Jun 25, 2009
Rauan
rated it:
interview about Holy Land with Keith Montesano is here at:
http://firstbookinterviews.blogspot.com/...
(added June 2009)
http://firstbookinterviews.blogspot.com/...
(added June 2009)
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Aug 30, 2008
Rusty
rated it:
I had to meander my way into this one slowly, but the rewards were great. You will remember these prose poems.
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(1 person liked it)
Jan 11, 2012
Valerie
rated it: 
This book of prose poems is published by one of my favorite presses, Black Ocean. The poems were different than other poems in the way that I liked them at the same time they made me uncomfortable. They were very well written. The poems take unpleasant images and appealing images and puts them together. As a reader, I don't like how the poet effectively combines the two things together, but as a poet, I really appreciate the pairings. It seems like an accomplishment.
Surrealism is one o More...
Surrealism is one o More...
Apr 10, 2010
Andy
rated it:
Holy Land, a prose poem collection by Rauan Klassnik is filled with disturbing imagery of war and violence juxtaposed with wildly surreal renderings of male/female couplings and the natural world. Unlike some other work labled "prose poetry", these most definitely come across as poems and very good ones indeed. I really liked Klassnik's aggressive, unflinching attitude in bringing together very sharply contrasting elements in very creatively clever ways. Bravo.
Apr 30, 2010
Noah
rated it:
It will cut you in places you didn't know were apart of you.
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Jan 12, 2012
Jeff
rated it:
These short prose poems brim with dark and violent imagery - they sketch a dream-scarred world at war with itself but still capable of tenderness. Sometimes the language is a bit generalized, but mostly it's arresting. This gem captured the book's essence for me:
"Two girls carrying a cage full of kittens down to the river. Don't be afraid! This is the world's beauty. Look!-with the cage between them still they're stepping carefully from rock to rock."
Klassnik More...
"Two girls carrying a cage full of kittens down to the river. Don't be afraid! This is the world's beauty. Look!-with the cage between them still they're stepping carefully from rock to rock."
Klassnik More...
May 23, 2011
Paul
rated it:
yes, an incredible book! rips you right out. i've read and re-read it about six times in the past few weeks, and now look forward to it influencing me in whatever visceral, potent and raging ways it can.
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