Passionate and powerful poetry with music: Begin your Exorcism now.

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SPOKEN WORD: With Music, SPOKEN WORD: Poetry

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Exorcism, Larissa Shmailo's second poetry CD, displays the remarkable range and electrifying vitality that have won her admirers worldwide. Following fast on the release of The No-Net World, Larissa Shmailo returns to her deepest poetic origins, and from there, reveals an ascendancy that will mystify and astound.
Begin your Exorcism. Take hold of the promise in âVow.â Itâs yours. It asks you to join the âpeople who fought and wonâ in âWarsaw Ghetto,â where youâll find your singing strength. The witty and defiant âDancing with the Devilâ leads you to learn âHow to Meet and Dance with Your Death.â This fiery and original narrative is fit only for real explorers. Heed the admonitions to avert unnecessary demons, see the sweaty face of your own Reaper, and know "after that, you will never fear him again, nor seek him." The hauntingly seductive puissance in âHe follows her . . .â yields to a caboodle of ghosts surveying a ghostly city in Shmailoâs sparkling translation of âDanteâ by Anna Ahkmatova.
As illusions of death wane, you will feel the pleasure and pain of âMy First Hurricane.â Then get âPersonalâ with longing for knowledge of the beloved. Power returns in the gorgeous âThe Gospel According to Magdalene,â a manifesto of might, whose structural elements are slyly subverted by sampling. Get under the tongue-in-cheek âSkin,â a grunge hymn, and emerge somewhere on âCatawissa Road,â where a skewering Penelope grudgingly meshes with a mad Odysseus. Overcome distaste for arid wastes when âAyahâ asks why a surplus of sand covers everything bland.
The still center is âBhakti,â Shmailoâs homage to tenth-century mystic poet Mahadevi-Akka, who worshiped the "Lord White as Jasmine," a destroyer of illusions who offers salvation repeatedly, from world to world. The savage art song, âBloomâ invokes Colette, Sand, and James Joyce and the lives of working women throughout the ages.
You may be well schooled by the âRules of Reflection,â yet there are perils ahead. This is, after all, an exorcism. A demonic maternal phantasmagoria scolds in âAt the Top of My Lungs,â twisting its enigmatic wreath of fears and death. But hold your tearsâand your breathâfor âAbortion Hallucination,â a lyric hell of loss and blackest light. Survive its strife. Let âNew Life 2â bring you back to life. Shmailoâs imaginative and noetic variation on a theme by Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky sifts for signification in catastrophe, inspired by escaping the great trapping fire of war. For more to scale, thereâs âMappingâ and, with urbane wit, finding âa use for all that doesnât fit.â
Engage interior doom and sacred terrain in âExorcism,â a syncretic chant, part found-poem, part puzzle, part indictment, and part prayer for social justice. If you want, you can fly full circle to âVow.â Play that first track again, and you have drawn a perfect circleâthat hardest of artistâs tasksâaccomplished by this poet of intense musical, imaginative, and thematic variety. Possess yourself. Repeat as needed. You stand on holy ground. - Eric Yost

About Larissa Shmailo:

Larissa Shmailo has been published in Fulcrum, Rattapallax, Drunken Boat, MiPoesias, and many other publications;her new chapbook is A Cure for Suicide(Cervena Barva Press 2008). Larissa translated the Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun by A. Kruchenych; a DVD of the original English-language production is part of the collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. She also contributed translations to the anthology Contemporary Russian Poetry published by Dalkey Archive Press. Larissa Shmailo is a director of TWiN Poetry, an informal international collective of recording poets and their listeners, and curator of Sliding Scale Poetry, which organizes benefits for human services and literacy organizations. She is also a public coordinator for the annual Fulcrum and a contributing editor for BigCityLit.com. Her first poetry CD, The No-Net World (SongCrew 2006) is frequently heard on radio and Internet broadcasts across the U.S. and the U.K. Larissa is listed in the Poetry Kit Whoâs Who in poetry. Visit Larissa at http://www.myspace.com/larissashmailoexorcism and at http://larissashmailo.blogspot.com.

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