The 44th of July
Distributed for Omnidawn Publishing, Inc.
88 pages
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1 halftone
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6 x 9
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© 2019
Review Quotes
NPR
"Cynical, impassioned, and careening into furious flights of fact and fancy, Bolina's third collection is animated by a vision of a trainwrecked America. Though the racism, violence, and consumer culture that Bolina rails against is nothing new, it's impossible not to read this book as a work of activism in protest against the political upheavals of the last two years. And yet, with a finally tuned ear for the music of our Internet Age language, Bolina manages to make it all sort of fun, and even funny. . . . In some of the darkest and bitterest political poems of our dark and bitter age, Bolina gives voice to the offline rage of those who are screaming to make America good again, if it ever was."
Library Journal
“Bolina writes socially aware poems mixing aesthetics with politics in emotionally charged language. It is poetry of bridging, connecting, and seeing to retain clarity and evoke awakening. . . . These attentive and subtle poems engage language expressively to address pressing realities, brilliantly demonstrating that poetry is action. Recommended for all poetry readers.”
Publishers Weekly
"Sonically powerful and careful in their word choice, these poems create a musical texture throughout. . . . Bolina’s poems are acute, playful works that precisely capture the surreality of our current political moment.”
Victoria Chang, author of Barbie Chang
"The poems in Jaswinder Bolina's third poetry collection (The 44th of July) are more than 'political poems'--these are poems that are so well made that they sing; they roll off your tongue and strike through your soul. Listen (from 'Supremacy'): 'the xenophobe fretful I'm somewhere/near, honing my chopsticks, loading/my tortas, my name writ in Gurmukhi,/he fidgets wakeful, fearful I'm awake also/reciting a scripture ruthless as his is/and I am. I am awake and singing.'"
Evie Shockley, author of semiautomatic
"The 44th of July offers a crushing critique of the current moment: the breakdown of human feeling and the rise of violence; the global flows of materialism and counter-circulation of refugees; the awful way we whistle while our pretense of democracy burns. But its poems trace these crises with irresistible exuberance and creativity. You will savor Bolina’s ability to walk a thread of language like a tightrope across time and space; you’ll wonder at the bizarre yet familiar worlds his inventive sentences create and inhabit. Jump aboard this merry-go-wrong . . . and hold on."
Jericho Brown, author of The Tradition
"Bolina remains a sincere poet of necessary ironies, and The 44th of July is his opus, his ode to how well our nation falls apart in front of us. Or, I should say, this book is a proper chronicle of how the ideal of America was never really made whole for all whom it claimed: 'You’ll need/new things you can’t even begin/to Costco, to crate or to barrel./Forget now your kitsch and granite/kitchen, your home depots/and free peoples, the soft power/of a staycation and owning/…the streetlights of your town./This is not your town. Nobody/here woos you…' These Whitmanian litanies and lovely long sentences mean to include the excluded and even to afford for delight where evil thrives. This is a brilliant book by a masterful poet."
WBUR News
"Cynical, impassioned, and careening into furious flights of fact and fancy, Bolina's third collection is animated by a vision of a trainwrecked America. . . . And yet, with a finally tuned ear for the music of our Internet Age language, Bolina manages to make it all sort of fun, and even funny, in a schadenfreude kind of way."
The Arkansas International
"His speakers shifts from witness to outsider to stealth transgressor, while his poems move quietly—measured and musical—with rhythms so deft the criticisms and wit unfold unexpectedly. Through his deliberate and attentive forms, he echoes the strategic footwork immigrants and POC master to navigate and survive the United States . . . . His representations of this nation are vivid, chilling and accurate—balanced but made all the more real by the humor."
2019 Big Other Book Award for Poetry
Finalist
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