Z213 Exit Reviews

Translated by Shorsha Sullivan and published by Shoestring Press as part of a beautifully-designed box set, Z213: Exit, the first volume in Dimitris Lyacos’ three-volume long poem Poena Damni, is a vertiginous work that is at once archetypal, transcendent, and uniquely suited to this particular ...

Z213: Exit—the first installment of Dimitris Lyacos’ Poena Damni trilogy—eludes a straightforward interpretation and defies easy genre categorization. One of the most striking features of the text, which offers an admixture of poetry, prose, and fractured discourse, is the varied, evanescent ...

However, while Z213: Exit is definitely hard-going, it’s nevertheless absorbing and enjoyable, even if one read is nowhere near enough to unlock its mysteries. The aim of the book, and who and what it’s about, may be unclear, but there’s enough to enjoy in the puzzles and the writing to make ...

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.

C'est un texte polymorphe, qui met en oeuvre tous les signes de l'ultramodernité, ce que l'on appelait autrefois l'avant-garde, pour renforcer sa densité "transgenre" et l'étrange de son propos.

No other writer can evoke the blurry, ambiguous feeling of dreaming quite like Lyacos. His work has been described as ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘eschatological’. ‘Purgatorial’ might be nearer the mark. Where else but in a dream does one grapple, over and over again, with one’s own soul in ...

Who is this narrator running from? The law? An invading force? A surveillance state? His own death? God? The same could be said of any of us, because all of us make our own mysteries with our guilt.

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 ...

Dimitris Lyacos’ Z213: EXIT is a revelation. A masterpiece. Distinctly postmodern yet entirely unclassifiable, it is everything and nothing all at once. Despite the myriad references to literature, it is entirely new – I have never read anything like it, and this stunning translation is truly ...

By pulling at the eternal literary threads from Greek antiquity and beyond, and coupling them with dystopic landscapes, Lyacos has woven a narrative that is relevant and timeless in the way it incorporates myth with modernity.

From the first page to last, Z213: EXIT is one word, unique. It certainly is not a traditional novel or conventional poetry, the words themselves veer from neat, almost atomic precision to scattered unhinged lettering and sporadic lonely spaces. [...]Is this a masterpiece? For many, it will be.

A fierce book that is as much puzzle as narrative, Z213: Exit is the first in a trilogy (known as the Poena Damni) that represents more than three decades of work. Dimitris Lyacos uses a fusion of stream-of-consciousness, verse, and prose to construct this fascinating narrative that approximates ...

It’s tempting to read the entire ‘Poena Damni’ trilogy as a response to the unremitting horrors of the 20th-century, and it’s hard to avoid associating the camp, the soldiers, and the guard towers with the disturbing Second World War images that should now be part of the collective subconscious. ...

Blanchot’s powerful and fragmentary contemplation Writing of the Disaster leaves me dumb and dumbfounded as I wander in a text of light and shadow, shapes and voids. Dimitris Lyacos makes admirable additions to such fragmentary writing. If an experimental book can be grounded, Z213: Exit is more ...

Lyacos shuttles the reader from the large-scale trauma of social collapse to the devastatingly intimate at dizzying speeds.

A truly unmatched piece of prose in content and style, Poena Damni Z:213 Exit might be short in size, but burgeoning in complexity.

A hellish agony is woven throughout the work and will draw comparisons to Dante but rest assured this is original writing unique to Dimitris Lyacos. Repetitive images and metaphor of stations and trains, of walls, of blood, of caves and pits, of clawing in search of light to the barrenness of plains, ...

Myth, in Lyacos, does not present itself as an organic whole upon which his writing is articulated: Z213: EXIT is not a new reading of the myth of Odysseus or Moses. Lyacos does not construct a new myth either. What he does is to turn the myth inwards, towards its deep structure, emphasizing its ...

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 ...

Εν κατακλείδι το Poena Damni είναι ένα έργο μετα-τραγικό. Σίγουρα δεν ακολουθεί τα ειδολογικά χαρακτηριστικά της τραγωδίας, αλλά περιγράφει τη βασανιστική και τραγική ...

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 ...

Z213 is a tricky, rewarding, quintessentially post-modern work. Yes, Z213 brings the twelve, the cross and the lamb to the poetics of the abyss.

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)

By tapping into - and engaging with such visceral detail, as the scraps and scrims of scenes here provide - this issue of how writing works on the most basic, universal level, Lyacos has created a book of real interest and reward.

Dimitris Lyacos may employ all the paraphernalia of post-modernist poetry: elliptical sentences, fragmented texts, imcomplete words and a stream-of-consciousness narrative, but he always works to a plan, and it is up to the reader to discover it and enjoy what is definitely one of the most exciting ...

Z213 Exit. Review by Paul Mc Donald. Envoi Literary Journal, Issue 158 (printed issue), Spring 2011.

The art of translation is a gift and we, as English speakers and readers, have Shorsha Sullivan to thank for bringing us the work of Greek poet Dimitris Lyacos. In Z213:Exit: Poena Dani, Lyacos’ middle collection in a series of three, we experience the world through the eyes of a prisoner as he ...

Overall, the collection leaves us with a wonderfully dark yet enticing description of what might be described as a philosophy of exits and entrances. The notion of the threshold is an age-old concern for writers that has assumed epic proportions in such works as Kafka's Before the Law and Beckett's ...

While I have no idea of Sullivan’s accuracy in translating this book, I do know that what I held when I read & read when I held Lyacos’ Z213: EXIT, an astounding river of words poured from an open wound. There is coming & going & loss & redemption. There are sharp & tongue-filled ...

If the translations of the poems are exact, these poems are light years beyond our contemporary poetics. Lyacos is a master craftsman steering his way through tons of immediate information.

Thought by itself tells you. Review on Z213: Exit by Jeffrey S. Callico. Negative Suck Review, November 2010, Georgia USA.

When not providing the reader with mystifying dreams and poetic diversion, Lyacos offers up a vision of agony more terryfying than any fire and brimstone sermon. Z213 is almost the opposite of a gospel account.

I recommend it because Lyacos is a true talent. You will not find his works easy read but most of the hard things in life provide us the biggest and most valuable rewards.

C'est un texte polymorphe, qui met en oeuvre tous les signes de l'ultramodernité, ce que l'on appelait autrefois l'avant-garde, pour renforcer sa densité transgenre et l'étrange de son propos.

Z213: Exit. Review by K.M. Dersley Ragged Edge Review, June 2010, UK.