Imperfect Penance
108 pages
Published: September 18, 2008
Poetry
Paperback: 9780864925176 $17.95
Passion, obsession, addiction, vision, and despair — these are just a few of the themes explored by Mitchell Parry in this poignant portrait of Austrian poet Georg Trakl. Born in Saltzburg in the second half of the 19th century, Trakl was severely addicted at an early age. He smoked opium and later took up chloroform, alcohol, and cocaine. He was passionately obsessed with his younger sister, witnessed the bodies of partisans hanging in trees, and attempted suicide on more than one occasion. He died at the age of twenty-four, leaving behind a legacy of poems that capture the anxiety, passion, and exhaustion of early twentieth-century Austria and the years leading up to the First World War.
Published: September 18, 2008
Poetry
Paperback: 9780864925176 $17.95
Passion, obsession, addiction, vision, and despair — these are just a few of the themes explored by Mitchell Parry in this poignant portrait of Austrian poet Georg Trakl. Born in Saltzburg in the second half of the 19th century, Trakl was severely addicted at an early age. He smoked opium and later took up chloroform, alcohol, and cocaine. He was passionately obsessed with his younger sister, witnessed the bodies of partisans hanging in trees, and attempted suicide on more than one occasion. He died at the age of twenty-four, leaving behind a legacy of poems that capture the anxiety, passion, and exhaustion of early twentieth-century Austria and the years leading up to the First World War.
Using Trakl as a lens, Parry explores the world of Freud, Wittgenstein, Rilke, Klimpt, Kakoschka, Loos, Kandinsky, and Klee, a time when Europe is drawn through the crucible of Modernism. In this blend of fact and fiction, poetry and prose, Parry flirts with darkness, plunging into a sordid and dangerous world and exploring the complex relationship between poetry and extremity. The result is both chilling and glorious.
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Author
Mitchell Parry's work has appeared in the Malahat Review, the Antigonish Review, Grain, Event, and Pottersfield Portfolio. His first book, Tacoma Narrows, was finalist for both the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. He lives on Pender Island, BC, and teaches film theory and literature at the University of Victoria.
Reviews
"Mitchell Parry’s imaginative, sometimes hallucinogenic, response to Georg Trakl's hothouse family and his intimate life and times is a gut-wrenching read. Imperfect Penance takes us through a journey of incestuous desire, drug addiction, war, and suicide. What to say about poems drenched in the 'green dreams of chloroform'? Harrowing yes, but fascinating, too. Darkly brilliant." — Patricia Young
