No Sign

"Balakian understands the bewildered music of our times, and No Sign, more than any other contemporary book of poetry, teaches us about the properties of time; we are inside the speech that is addressing time and opposing it, witnessing it, and walking two steps ahead. This 'time-sense' is explored with depth in the brilliant title poem. Balakian is able to praise the world though he knows its 'bitter history.' And praise he does! The lyricism here is of utter beauty. No Sign is a splendid, necessary book." -- Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic "Balakian has been writing intellectually challenging poems of 'bright unbearable reality' that are part of an ongoing conversation in American poetry for some time. They have the horizontal continuum of history, like Walcott and Heaney, but they also have verticality which arrests time and connects with the demonic and divine. He masterfully does the thing nobody else does which is to derange history into poetry, to make poetry painting, to make painting culture, to make culture living, and with a historical depth that finds the right experience in language." -- Bruce Smith, author of Spill "In No Sign, Balakian embraces the claims of immediacy as well as the encompassing historical perspective. His images and sharp syncopations locate the pulse of our times and give it a prophetic reverberation. Here is a voice of witness which also makes room for an irrepressible sensory imagination." -- Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age