Subject
Tom Bolt's *DARK ICE*
Date
Body
----------------------------------------------------
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
NABOKV-L presents Thomas Bolt's poem *Dark Ice*
This 1001-line poem and its extensive notes cannot
fail to delight admirers of VN *Pale Fire*, poem
and commentary, which inspire much of Bolt's
text. Nabokov is (literally) a ghostly presence
in the poem. Although making dazzling use of
Nabokovian techniques --- subtexts, motifs,
imagery, word play (especially anagrams based
upon VLADIMIR NABOKOV and PALE FIRE, *Dark Ice*
is, many senses, an antonym to Nabokov's "Pale
Fire." John Shade's private poem on the
suicide-drowning of his daughter Hazel and the
meaning of death corresponds, in Bolt's poem, to
a meditation on uncomfortable intersections in
American and Russian history.
The poem first appeared in the avant-
garde NY arts periodical BOMB, but without the
notes that are an integral part of the whole.
(It might be remarked that the appearance of
the BOMB "stand alone" version testifies to the
work's "narrowly" poetic merits.) Because Bolt
makes extensive use of typographical devices
(impossible to duplicate in E-mail ASCII,) and
because the annotated form of the work ideally
lends itself to hypertext formating, the best
version of the work may be found on the Nabokov
WWW site,
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/diintro.htm.
Those with WWW-access should read the text
there and participate in the interview/discussion
here on NABOKV-L. For those without WWW access,
NABOKV-L offers the specially prepared version
which follows. Publication of the hypertext
*Dark Ice* on Zembla and the ASCII version on NABOKV-L mark the first
publication of the work
as a whole.
Our presentation of the poem will be
followed by an interview with Bolt and his
response to readers' questions.
Bolt, who won the coveted Yale Younger
Poets Prize in 1989 for his *Out of the Woods*,
has published in *The Paris Review* (where some
shorter pieces are forthcoming), *BOMB*, and
*Southwest Review* (where his long poem,
"Wedgwood," won an award for the best poem the
quarterly published in 1994). His other awards
and fellowships include the Rome Prize for Literature of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, The Peter I. B. Lavin Younger Poet
Award of the American Academy of Poets, an
Ingram Merrill Fellowship, and a 1997 Artist's
Fellowship from the New York Foundation for
the Arts. Bolt's poems are included in *Sixty
Years of American Poetry* (Harry N. Abrams,
New York, 1996).
Bolt is also a fiction writer.
Forthcoming publications include a short story,
"A Cluster of Sunsets," in the Autumn 1997 issue
of *Southwest Review* (due out in mid-December),
and he is busy finishing a novel.
----------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
NABOKV-L presents Thomas Bolt's poem *Dark Ice*
This 1001-line poem and its extensive notes cannot
fail to delight admirers of VN *Pale Fire*, poem
and commentary, which inspire much of Bolt's
text. Nabokov is (literally) a ghostly presence
in the poem. Although making dazzling use of
Nabokovian techniques --- subtexts, motifs,
imagery, word play (especially anagrams based
upon VLADIMIR NABOKOV and PALE FIRE, *Dark Ice*
is, many senses, an antonym to Nabokov's "Pale
Fire." John Shade's private poem on the
suicide-drowning of his daughter Hazel and the
meaning of death corresponds, in Bolt's poem, to
a meditation on uncomfortable intersections in
American and Russian history.
The poem first appeared in the avant-
garde NY arts periodical BOMB, but without the
notes that are an integral part of the whole.
(It might be remarked that the appearance of
the BOMB "stand alone" version testifies to the
work's "narrowly" poetic merits.) Because Bolt
makes extensive use of typographical devices
(impossible to duplicate in E-mail ASCII,) and
because the annotated form of the work ideally
lends itself to hypertext formating, the best
version of the work may be found on the Nabokov
WWW site,
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/diintro.htm.
Those with WWW-access should read the text
there and participate in the interview/discussion
here on NABOKV-L. For those without WWW access,
NABOKV-L offers the specially prepared version
which follows. Publication of the hypertext
*Dark Ice* on Zembla and the ASCII version on NABOKV-L mark the first
publication of the work
as a whole.
Our presentation of the poem will be
followed by an interview with Bolt and his
response to readers' questions.
Bolt, who won the coveted Yale Younger
Poets Prize in 1989 for his *Out of the Woods*,
has published in *The Paris Review* (where some
shorter pieces are forthcoming), *BOMB*, and
*Southwest Review* (where his long poem,
"Wedgwood," won an award for the best poem the
quarterly published in 1994). His other awards
and fellowships include the Rome Prize for Literature of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, The Peter I. B. Lavin Younger Poet
Award of the American Academy of Poets, an
Ingram Merrill Fellowship, and a 1997 Artist's
Fellowship from the New York Foundation for
the Arts. Bolt's poems are included in *Sixty
Years of American Poetry* (Harry N. Abrams,
New York, 1996).
Bolt is also a fiction writer.
Forthcoming publications include a short story,
"A Cluster of Sunsets," in the Autumn 1997 issue
of *Southwest Review* (due out in mid-December),
and he is busy finishing a novel.
----------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------