{"product_id":"archive-of-desire-a-poem-in-four-parts-for-c-p-cavafy-hardcover","title":"Archive of Desire: A Poem in Four Parts for C. P. Cavafy - Hardcover","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eRobin Coste Lewis\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe National Book Award, PEN\/Voelcker Award, and NAACP Image Award winner returns with another inventive and boundary-breaking book: a sensual journey ignited in the archives of iconic queer Alexandrian poet C. P. Cavafy.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn her first book, Robin Coste Lewis's poems exploded the imagery of the Black female figure from antiquity through the present day. Her second book was an expansive hybrid photographic and poetic study of human migration and the human family. Now she delivers a \"poem in four parts,\" which originated as a musical, visual, and lyrical collaboration with the composer Vijay Iyer, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, and visual artist Julie Mehretu, with Lewis on the microphone offering a live reading of this sequence. Ignited by their encounters with Cavafy's archive, in the heart of Athens, the multimedia quartet exalted the liminal spaces where desire and diaspora meet--where art often asserts itself most forcefully. In this volume, Lewis brings this performance to life on the page, where the poem weaves in and out of Cavafy's bedrooms, notebooks, and the suppressed erotic excavation underpinning all of his work. Lewis converses directly with Mr. Cavafy: \"often you \/ reminded us that \/\/ the only true \/ barbarians are the ones \/ raging in silence inside \/\/ of our own \/ minds.\" But she also brings equal parts of herself to this study of artistry and sensuality, as in the short, tender section entitled \"Cavafy in Compton\/Closet Anthem: Self-Portrait at Sixteen, 1979.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAs in all Lewis's works, here she reaches across centuries to express what is timeless and not bound by our current moment or our single selves: the discipline and glory of art, the give-and-take of love, the kiss that lives in the moment, and the unfolding journey of being human, whose contours become clear only with the passage of time, the igniting of memory, and the words we find to describe the journey.\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eROBIN COSTE LEWIS won the National Book Award for \u003ci\u003eVoyage of the Sable Venus, \u003c\/i\u003e her first collection of poetry. The book was also a finalist for the Hurston\/Wright Legacy Award and the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e Book Award, and it was named one of the best books of the year by \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times. Literary Hub\u003c\/i\u003e named it one of the best books of the last twenty years. Her second book, \u003ci\u003eTo the Realization of Perfect Helplessness\u003c\/i\u003e, was the winner of the PEN\/Voelcker Award for Poetry and the NAACP Image Award for Oustanding Literary Work in Poetry. She is also the coauthor, with Kevin Young, of \u003ci\u003eRobert Rauschenberg: Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante's Inferno\u003c\/i\u003e. The former poet laureate of Los Angeles, Lewis holds a PhD in poetry and visual studies from the University of Southern California, an MFA in poetry from New York University, an MTS in Sanskrit and comparative religious literature from the Divinity School at Harvard University, and a BA in post-colonial literature and creative writing from Hampshire College. Her work has appeared in various journals, including \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Transition, \u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Massachusetts Review\u003c\/i\u003e. She is currently a professor of poetry and poetics at USC.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 96\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.7 x 9.4 x 6.2 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e October 07, 2025\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53336993726829,"sku":"9781524732608","price":34.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1001\/0823\/9213\/files\/eH0rAihqP89781524732608.webp?v=1778922831","url":"https:\/\/cleanfreaklab.myshopify.com\/products\/archive-of-desire-a-poem-in-four-parts-for-c-p-cavafy-hardcover","provider":"Clean Freak Lab","version":"1.0","type":"link"}