Poem Strip including an Explanation of the Afterlife (New York Review Books Classics)

From the heady, voluptuous days of the 1960s comes this haunting reinterpretation of the myth of Orpheus & Eurydice. Somewhere between illustrated text & graphic novel, it filters the Timeless through the then-contemporary, making the myth new & alive once more, utilizing spare but lyrical poetry & simple but evocative art. The result is a rich & hallucinatory descent into the underworld of both society & psyche, with the intertwining of Sex & Death never so vivid & undeniable. In a dazzling mixture of the Surreal & ultra-modern Pop, writer/artist Dino Buzzati takes us to the dark, primal place we know exists, but hesitate to acknowledge for fear of what we'll find there ... ourselves as we least wish to see ourselves, stripped of protective illusions & all social veneer. Yet there's a desolate purity in that state, one that offers the opportunity to discover something real & vital to take back with us to the land of the living, the everyday world. This is the function of both art & myth, reaching its very ripe fruition in these pages -- highly recommended!

A very worth-reading mix of translated poetry and unique illustration art. I enjoyed the experience. Not really a "graphic novel" but very interesting.

Very different and therefore enjoyable for that reason alone. Recommend for the avant garde.

Very interesting poems.

Although my appreciation of Buzzati has included 5 full readings of his masterpiece The Tartare Steppe, it took me a while to crack open Poem Strip after buying it. I did not want to be disappointed, I guess. The thing is, once the timing was right, and I had come to enjoy graphic novels more in my life, I discovered that Dino offers an absolutely great one, unique for its genuine literary qualities, its chilling profundity, and its stirring artwork, which typically expands the reading experience by offering images that open the imagination rather than simply serve as its crutch. In short, if you think you might enjoy a poetic approach to meditating on the nature of life and death through stylized myth and otherworldly cartooning, this book will offer a few very pleasing sittings, and in my case a wish to read it again almost immediately (see first sentence above...). If nothing else, it's also really cool to acquaint with this daring precursor to our golden age of the graphic novel.

Originally written in 1969, this is a bizarre but attractive graphic novel-style modern retelling of the Orpheus and Euridice myth. In Milan, during the late 1960s, a brooding rock star descends to the underworld to bring back his beloved girlfriend to the world of the living. The bizarre drawings (by the author himself, and clearly influenced by the pop art of the era) seeps horror and sex in every page. Italian writer Dino Buzzati (1906-1972) is to me one of the most underrated authors of the 20th century. He is not very well known, but every book I have read from him is extremely commendable, from the classic philosophical novel The Tatar Steppe to the mythical The Secret of the Old Forest to the children book The Bears Famous Invasion of Sicily and to the terrific tale of crazy love Un Amore.

Throughout my reading, this book never ceased to surprise me. Every few pages I felt drawn into yet another bizarre atmosphere and situation. The translation is faithful to the lyricism of the original, I feel, and Buzzati's retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is one of the most provocative modern ones I've come across.

Buzzati avait aussi des talents de dessinateur. Dans les années 70, à la bibliothèque Pompidou, j’avais lu ce poème en bandes dessinées. J’avais tout rangé dans un coin de ma mémoire. Quelques années après, j’ai fait un voyage en Italie. La vue des rangées de cyprès le long des routes sous les nuages moutonniers dans la campagne italienne fait tout d’un coup resurgir des émotions enfouies, par association d’idées et d’images, exactement comme une madeleine trempée dans une tasse de thé. De quoi ce livre parle-il ? De nos jours, un jeune premier Milanais, avatar d’Orphée, descend en enfer à la recherche de sa bien-aimée. Prétexte à une méditation mélancolique sur la vie, le temps, l’amour, la mort. Je préfère la traduction française (épuisée, qu’on trouve seulement d’occasion) à cette traduction anglaise ( neuve et moins chère) , sans doute parce que la langue française, dérivée de la même racine latine, traduit mieux la sensibilité italienne.

good