Dead Reckoning

Transatlantic Passages on Europe and America

By Andrei Guruianu & Anthony Di Renzo

Subjects: Literature, Poetry, Ethnic History, History, Italian American Studies
Series: Excelsior Editions
Imprint: Excelsior Editions
Paperback : 9781438461120, 230 pages, May 2016

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Table of contents

TO THE READER
I. MEMORY, YOU SAVAGE TRIUMPH
Andrei
A Blueprint for Memory
Return through a Gap in Time
Propaganda of the Self
From All Points East
Antonio
Laughing in the Ruins (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Echoes of a Remembered Sentiment
Truth and Tangents (or What Becomes Art)
Lipscani
Antonio
Laughing in the Ruins (Pt. 2)
II. THE ART OF EXILE
Andrei
Yes, I Am. Maybe.
Some Call It a Performance
Of Marionettes
The Faces We Wear
Antonio
A Hole in the Sky (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Because We Are Meant to Be Forgotten
Zero-Sum
Not-Light
Antonio
A Hole in the Sky (Pt. 2)
III. HISTORY, OPEN FOR BUSINESS
Andrei
Communism, the After-Christmas Sale
One Kiss, for the Revolution
Open for Business
Imperial Song
Antonio
The Last Mirage (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Bad Habits of Old Women
First Sign of Promise
Vicious Cycle

Antonio
The Last Mirage (Pt. 2)
IV. AN AUTOPSY OF BELIEF
Andrei
Pray Daily: Use Words If You Must
When the Oil Burns Low
The City of Logical Conclusions
A Rough Angelology
Antonio
Duino Elegies (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Between Gods
The Candle Is Out; No Matches
Arrival of the Invitation; Inconclusive Directions
Antonio
Duino Elegies (Pt. 2)
V. THE CUNNING OF REASON
Andrei
Peddling Myth
On a Day between Seasons
Waiting Our Turn
Legends and Other Ordinary Things
Antonio
Bread and Circuses (Pt. 1) Andrei
Parallel Vista
Exit Strategy
The Future Is Best Eaten with a Wooden Spoon
Antonio
Bread and Circuses (Pt. 2)
VI. ETERNAL RECURRENCES
Andrei
A Blueprint for Memory (Redux)
Insert Inspirational Slogan Here
Talking Old Country Blues
It Could Have Been a Dream
Antonio
Nietzsche in Turin (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Always the Small Things
On the Outside Looking In
How It Was and How It Should Be (When Death Happens at a Distance)
Antonio
Nietzsche in Turin (Pt. 2)
VII. AFTER BABEL
Andrei
Nonwords
Instructions for Learning a New Language
Anatomy of Dreams
Encoded
Antonio
Dreams of a Common Language (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Palimpsest
Under Our Fingernails
Wordless
Antonio
Dreams of a Common Language (Pt. 2)
VIII. WHAT’S SO REAL ABOUT SURREALISM?
Andrei
Funny When You Think about It
Even Though Everyone Knows Better
Without a Hero
It Ends Differently
Antonio
The Disquieting Muses (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Frat, ii Mei (My Brothers)
Arrangement for Stills
A Common Thing
Antonio
The Disquieting Muses (Pt. 2)

IX. CHILDHOOD AND ITS DERIVATIVES
Andrei
The Eternal Children
One Continuous
What You Leave Behind
The Other Side Of
Antonio
Giovinezza (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Psalm for the Children of the Rain
The Plot Against
Vignette
Antonio
Giovinezza (Pt. 2)
X. HERE AND NOW
Andrei
Make Beautiful, Again
Building Blocks
When Turning Toward
Make Beautiful
Antonio
Apollo Atones (Pt. 1)
Andrei
Approaching Stalemate
The Exact Reasons
Otherwise a Life
Antonio
Apollo Atones (Pt. 2)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHORS

A poet and essayist attempt to find their bearings in a civilization lost at sea.

Description

Dead reckoning is the nautical term for calculating a ship's position using the distance and direction traveled rather than instruments or astronomical observation. For those still recovering from the atrocities of the twentieth century, however, the term has an even grimmer meaning: toting up the butcher's bill of war and genocide.

As its title suggests, Dead Reckoning is an attempt to find our bearings in a civilization lost at sea. Conducted in the shadow of the centennial of the First World War, this dialogue between Romanian American poet Andrei Guruianu and Italian American essayist Anthony Di Renzo asks whether Western culture will successfully navigate the difficult waters of the new millennium or shipwreck itself on the mistakes of the past two centuries. Using historical and contemporary examples, they explore such topics as the limitations of memory, the transience of existence, the futility of history, and the difficulties of making art and meaning in the twenty-first century.

Andrei Guruianu teaches in the Expository Writing Program at New York University. His previous books include the poetry collections Made in the Image of Stones and Portrait without a Mouth. Anthony Di Renzo is Associate Professor of Writing at Ithaca College and the author of many books, including Bitter Greens: Essays on Food, Politics, and Ethnicity from the Imperial Kitchen, also published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"This is a collection readers will savor on first read and a collection they will return to many times after. When they do, they will find new spaces, new contexts, new realizations. It's a log of the realities and the post-memory of immigration and human migration written with true craft, intelligence, and sensitivity. Dead Reckoning is living writing of great importance and great beauty." — Ovunque Siamo

"In the end, a common understanding is what both Guruianu and Di Renzo are searching for in their fragments. There is no system or ideology that links these sections. In their judgment, that would be fatal to their cause … They write because hope is not lost. As they demonstrate we still have history, memory, and reason, if we search for it … [W]hat the American poet T. S. Eliot said at the end of his poem 'The Waste Land' … applies so well to Guruianu and Di Renzo's Dead Reckoning: 'These fragments I have shored against my ruins.'" — L'Italo-Americano

"The experimental hybrid narrative of Dead Reckoning offers an original and thought-provoking contribution to transatlantic studies, drawing connections between disparate histories and disciplines as well as between writers and readers. Its historical reflections also feel eerily relevant at a time when alt-right nationalism is gaining ground both in Europe and the United States. As such, the collection offers many disturbing though useful insights into unsettling current events. Ultimately, however, the text highlights the hopeful power of the imagination and our ability to (re)create our own lives so that, in the final analysis, they might be worth reliving." — Modern Language Studies

"From the dedication through to the closing curious funerary scene for the poet Ezra Pound, Dead Reckoning is an intriguing literary journey that defies classification. Travel by boat from Italy and Romania to America with two writers who notice all the unusual details most of us miss along the way. You'll encounter Ginsberg, Wordsworth, Duchamp, psalmists, the Boston Bombers, and some Romanian philosophers, to name a few. The prose poetry here is a dialogue between two collaborating writers and the reader about politics and immigration, with insight and antagonism from everyone from Dante to Mussolini. If most books on these subjects are either too sentimental or too soulless and dry, this one is quite different from the rest: the words are smart, witty, and blindingly beautiful." — Lorette C. Luzajic, editor, The Ekphrastic Review

"Dead Reckoning is an unbridled ride through a maelstrom of politics, history, and culture. Romanian American poet Andrei Guruianu writes about Communism, Vlad the Impaler, and Nicolae Ceauşescu. Italian American essayist Anthony Di Renzo focuses on Italian figures, from Alessandro Manzoni and Giuseppe Mazzini to Benito Mussolini and Silvio Berlusconi. Both writers speak persuasively from their separate, intersecting sections, but without a dogma, creed, or system. Once the window of civilization is shattered, it can never be put back together. Dead Reckoning, however, offers us a glimpse into Western culture through the two authors' scattered fragments." — Kenneth Scambray, author of Queen Calafia's Paradise: California and the Italian American Novel

"The authors share a certain provocativeness, but their paragraphs are phrased so deftly and persuasively, that even where one disagrees, one is compelled to think with care through their arguments and come to grips with them." — Italian Americana

"Dead Reckoning pilots readers through the purgatory of immigration, a painful sea voyage that with enough courage and hard work can lead through the narrow channel facing paradise: spiritual and material success. Charting the currents between the Old and New Worlds, Andrei Guruianu and Anthony Di Renzo write with the ferocious genius of Pope and Swift and the compassionate heart of Saint Nicholas, patron of sailors and guardian of ports." — Emanuel di Pasquale, author of The Ocean's Will

"In the space of the passage from immigrant to citizen in a new home, things fall apart to an apparent nothingness. Guruianu and Di Renzo ask us to consider a brave creativity as an answer for the space where systems fall apart, so that it can be a place where things grow in a reverence for the need to live, to love, to have community, and to be truly free." — Afaa M. Weaver, author of City of Eternal Spring

"A lovely, seductive, original book." — Thomas G. Pavel, author of The Lives of the Novel: A History