Touch to Affliction

"Touch to Affliction is a text of ruins: ruins of genre, of language, of the city, of the body, of the barbarism of the twentieth century. At once lament, accusation and elegy, this work articulates the crumbling of buildings, the evisceration of language, the inhumanity that arises from patrie. Acclaimed poet Nathalie Stephens walks among these ruins, calling out to those before her who have contemplated atrocity: Martin Buber, Henryk Górecki, Simone Weil. In the end, this work considers what we are left with - indeed, what is left of us - as both participants in and heirs to the twentieth cen."@en
"From the ruins of poetry, fiction and philosophy comes Touch To Affliction, a meditation on the notion of homeland, on patrie and the inhumanity that arises from it. This is a text obsessed with ruins: the ruins of genre, of language, of the city, of the body. The history of the twentieth century is a history of barbarism, and Stephens walks, like a flâneur, through its midst, experiencing through her own body the crumbled buildings, the dessicated cities, the eviscerated language and humanity of our time, calling out in passing to those before her who have contemplated atrocity: Martin Buber, Henryk Gorecki, Simone Weil. In the end, it considers what we are left with--indeed, what is left of us--as both participants in and heirs to the twentieth century.--Coach House Books."@en