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Tea Ceremonies for Winter
Contributor(s): Perez, Rolando (Author)
ISBN: 1887276890     ISBN-13: 9781887276894
Publisher: Cool Grove Press
OUR PRICE:   $13.46  
Product Type: Paperback
Published: December 2018
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Poetry | Asian - Japanese
- Poetry | American - Hispanic American
- Literary Criticism | African
Dewey: 892.8
LCCN: 2018951537
Physical Information: 0.4" H x 5.1" W x 7.8" (0.22 lbs) 65 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

The Japanese tea ceremony is an attempt to impart meaning to that which would oth- erwise go unnoticed. After all, what is so different about serving, pouring, drinking tea, than the brushing of one's teeth? No-thing. What gives significance to the serving of the tea is the "ceremony" itself--that is, the form. For in the tea ceremony, the form is the content. Now, in comparison to the Western poem, "full of" meaning, allusions, mythologies, history, etc. a haiku may "just" describe a scene in nature: the landscape: a river, a tree, a bird, and not much else. But that is so very much already, Rolando Pérez seems to suggest in Tea Ceremonies for Winter. So very much. "The objects of nature pre- sented in a Basho haiku, for instance, simply are--they exist for themselves," says Pérez. "If they are 'sublime, ' they are not so for us," and this is what we must all learn, if we are to save the Earth from complete destruction--the result of our Western greed and rampant narcissism. In this light, Tea Ceremonies for Winter is an invitation--through lan- guage--to let non-human objects be without submitting them to the control, manipu- lation, and exploitation of our Imperial I. Pérez's Tea Ceremonies for Winter is a book that says: "we are all in this together"--but that "we" also includes mountains, rivers, plastic bags, plants, rocks, tea leaves, light bulbs valves, hammers, mice, etc.. Pérez accomplishes this with simplicity and elegance of style


Contributor Bio(s): Perez, Rolando: - Rolando Pérez is professor of Spanish and Latin American literature and philosophy at the Romance Languages Department of Hunter College--CUNY. He is the author of numerous publications on the Neo- Baroque, and the relation between literature, the visual arts, and philosophy. Pérez is also the author of a number of literary works, some which have been anthologized in The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (2012). His most recent publications are TEA CEREMONIES FOR WINTER, Severo Sarduy and the Neo-Baroque Image of Thought in the Visual Arts, Agorapoetics: Poetics after Postmodernism, and La comedia eléctrica, a translation by Óscar Curieses of THE ELECTRIC COMEDY was published by Amargord Ediciones in Madrid.