Teardrops of Time

Investigates how the Thai poet Angkarn Kallayanapong adapts Buddhist concepts of time to create a modern Asian aesthetic imaginary.

Focusing on one of the most significant poets of the twentieth century, Angkarn Kallayanapong (1926–2012), this book makes a unique contribution to understandings of non-Western literary modernity. Arnika Fuhrmann investigates how the Thai poet adapts Buddhist understandings of time to create a modern Asian aesthetic imaginary. While Angkarn’s poetry conjures the image of an early modern Thai cosmopolitanism, it also pioneers a poetics reflective of present-day globalization. The result is an experiment in Buddhist cosmopolitan aesthetic modernity. Teardrops of Time contextualizes the poet’s work in the literary history and cultural politics of his time, tracing the transformation of a modern Thai cultural and political imaginary through the political history of the country’s authoritarian governance since the late 1950s and the exigencies of an increasingly globalized economy since the 1980s. As Angkarn’s work aligns itself with contemporaneous global trends in poetry, the book reads it alongside the work of Paul Celan and Allen Ginsberg.

“Arnika Fuhrmann’s ambitious project to investigate all possible aspects of Angkarn’s oeuvre, ranging from Buddhist temporal ontologies to transnational trends in modern poetics, is laudable, as it paves a new path for Thai literary studies beyond national boundaries and nationalist ideology. By contextualizing Angkarn’s works within the local literary culture under the military regimes in Thailand as well as within global literary movements and global cultural production, Fuhrmann is able to offer a better understanding of Angkarn’s innovative poetics and identify the literary and political impacts of his works.” — Chusak Pattarakulvanit, Thammasat University

Arnika Fuhrmann is Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Cornell University and the author of Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema.