The First Death Reviews

Regular readers may remember my posts a while back on the first two parts of Greek writer Dimitris Lyacos’ Poena Damni trilogy, and today’s review sees me finishing off the work with a look at the third section. It’s an intriguing, perplexing cycle of books, with each having it’s own unique ...

How did a book of Greek poetry become one of the most-discussed and most-lauded pieces of contemporary European literature? Garrett Phelps, Assistant Managing Editor at Asymptote, explains what makes Dimitris Lyacos’ Poena Damni trilogy is so unusual—and so difficult to describe.

In Dimitris Lyacos’s The First Death densely layered fragments fluidly reference the Bible and Classical Greek literature. The white space around these passages heighten the stark sense of loneliness present in the book. The desperation in this book explores a thanatic urge through multiple vectors. ...

One of the most original and significant texts to have come out of Europe in the past generation is Dimitris Lyacos’ poetic trilogy, Poena Damni. I call it ‘poetic’ because there is no word that quite describes a work that moves alternately between poetry, prose, and drama, and that ...

Dictionary Entry. Fran Mason, Historical Dictionary of Postmodern Literature and Theater, pp. 276-77. Second Edition, Rowman and Littlefield 2016.

Lyacos writes one of the most memorable traditionally experimental poetry collections I’ve read. It avoids the visual wankery of bill bissett, the gentle chopping of line typical in Jorie Graham, and the terse verse of Rae Armantrout, while retaining the weightiness of surreal abstraction... A ...

Despite the reluctance to pin Lyacos's work down to any specific site of struggle, the reader comes away also having found in his words one of the most evocative and moving depictions of the sense of terror and hope that so many precarious lives experience today in making their journeys by boat ...

Es fehlt nur noch, dass auch der Tod, der qualvolle Sterbeprozess eines Individuums Einzug in unsere Reality-TV-Welt hält, die Horrorfilme Wirklichkeit werden. Dann könnte man Lyacos Band als prophetisch bezeichnen.

Die Hölle bin Ich! schreit der Krüppel. Die Suche nach einem transzendentalen Autismus ist also unsere Arbeit. Dabei geht es nicht um eine Kommunikation im Rahmen der symbolischen Ordnung, sondern um den freiwilligen Übergang in die Welt des Realen. Willkommen zu meiner Hölle! würde der Krüppel ...

A Arte de TraduzirPoena DamniUma Nota sobre Traduzir a Trilogia de Dimitris Lyacospor Shorsha Sullivantradução de Eduardo Miranda"Bless thee Bottom, bless thee; thou art translated."(A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act Three, Scene One)

Back to the world through a nightmare: Some notes on Dimitris Lyacos' The First Death by Elena KouttisDimitris Lyacos's trilogy Poena Damni ends with The First Death. The book starts in a desert rock where a cripple is slowly moving like "lava from beheaded rivers". His intentions become ...

“……Ma cosa c’ è di più bello di farsi fottere dai sogni e poi urlare al cielo vaffanculo, chi se ne frega. Nessuno può immaginare quanta ricchezza c’ è in certe sconfitte. Conta il coraggio nella partita della vita. E non mi importa se per colpa di altri sono diventato un inferno. ...

Shorsha Sullivan The Punishment of Loss A Note on Dimitris Lyacos\' The First Death Awareness of irreparable loss is traditionally the nemesis that overtakes that part of human consciousness which continues, we may suppose, after the dissolution of the body. Yet, ...

R.G. GregoryActivating the First DeathTHE FIRST DEATH by Dimitris Lyacos has been translated from the Greek into English by Shorsha Sullivan.It is the third in an intended trilogy of dramatic poems and seems ready-made for the kind of theatre-presentation I have been ...

The Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Volume 19, 2001/ John Hopkins University Press.Robert Zaller - Recent Translations from Shoestring Press. Tassos Denegris, Dimitris Lyacos, Dionysios Solomos.[…]Dimitris Lyacos’s The First Death is the latest installment of a narrative ...

Bruno Rosada, University of Venice The First Death Characteristics of Dimitris Lyacos' poetry It is the poet's predilection for concrete nouns, terms referring to reality, that contributes above all to the reader's first impression. ...