Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. A BLIZZARD IN MY BONES: NEW YORK POEMS is a brilliant and groundbreaking new work focusing on the “first city of the world” by the internationally acclaimed Himalayan poet, Yuyutsu Sharma. Reminiscent of F.G. Lorca, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’ Hara and Carl Sandburg, the poems constitute Sharma’s reflections on what it means for a Himalayan poet to transform to a new creation, a New Yorker. The poet begins the book with a shamanic vision of his grandmother several decades ago, then weaves a family tapestry of a traditional life abandoned as the poet embraces the artist’s life and its ceaseless wanderings around the globe. In an evocative sequence, the poet is sleeping by the Atlantic shore where he envisions his deceased mother getting ready for a marriage that will never take place; and as the poet wakes, he moves from vision to vision as his Himalayan culture collides with the cultures of New York City: “a zoo / of blazing skyline on a moonlit night / and steps into a place / six feet deep, dank, under ocean, omnivorous.” Sharma carefully unfolds a tender but triumphant vision of a metropolis that is not a city of any one country, but of the world. Most importantly, as in all of Sharma’s work, A BLIZZARD IN MY BONES: NEW YORK POEMS celebrates a shared, ennobling vision of humanity.
Recipient of fellowships and grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, Ireland Literature Exchange, Trubar Foundation, Slovenia, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature and The Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature, Yuyutsu Sharma is a distinguished poet and translator. Widely traveled author, he has authored ten poetry collections. Half the year, he travels and reads all over the world to read from his works and conducts creative writing workshop at various universities in North America and Europe but goes trekking in the Himalayas when back home. Currently, Yuyutsu is a visiting poet at Columbia University, New York.
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