Books by Ange Mlinko

Venice

by Ange Mlinko

Ange Mlinko alchemizes art and life into a dazzling collection of poetry in Venice

In Venice, Ange Mlinko dissolves the boundaries between the sublime and the ordinary, the mythic and the rational, the past and the present. She sees a Roman tablet, scratched with Greek script, in the waxen wings of a bouffant bee, and she thinks of the abyss between two airport terminals when considering Rodin’s Gates of Hell. From Naples, Italy, to its sister city on the Gulf of Mexico, or at home, in the glow of a computer screen (“I worry / that Zoom is ruled by djinn / that filter out the wavelength of love / and so I wear my evil eye jewelry, // as you advised, against being too /much in view . . .”), Mlinko probes the etymologies and eccentricities of all she encounters. As Dan Chiasson wrote in The New Yorker, “Her extraordinary wit, monitoring its own excesses, is her compass.”

On her travels, Mlinko scrapes at the patina of the past and considers the line between destruction and preservation. Sparking with wit and intelligence, the poet’s own lines break down and remake language, myth, and time. Mlinko is a poet of art and of life, and Venice is a sumptuous exploration of poetry’s capacity to capture the miracles and ironies of our times.

Distant Mandate: Poems

by Ange Mlinko

In Distant Mandate, Ange Mlinko moves between the tormented southern landscape, with its alternately arid and flooded scrublands, and the imaginative landscapes of Western art. Guided by her spiritual forbears―Orpheus, Mallarmé, Pound, Yeats, and others―Mlinko deftly places herself within the tradition of the poet in protest against the obduracy of the real.

Mlinko takes the title from a piece by Laszló Krasznahorkai on the unknowable origins of the Alhambra, the monument “for the sight of which there is only a distant mandate . . . [one] can see, in any event, the moment of creation of the world, of course all the while understanding nothing of it.” This distant mandate, also the “bitter ideal” of Mallarmé, is the foundation upon which all works of art are composed―the torment of eros and the intimation of war.

Myth is central to these poems; some are based on the story Cupid and Psyche, others serve as odes to Aphrodite or as explorations of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In Distant Mandate, Mlinko has given us a shimmering and vibrant collection, one that shows us not only how literature imagines itself through life but also how life reimagines itself through literature.

Distant Mandate: Poems

by Ange Mlinko

In Distant Mandate, Ange Mlinko moves between the tormented southern landscape, with its alternately arid and flooded scrublands, and the imaginative landscapes of Western art. Guided by her spiritual forbears―Orpheus, Mallarmé, Pound, Yeats, and others―Mlinko deftly places herself within the tradition of the poet in protest against the obduracy of the real.

Mlinko takes the title from a piece by Laszló Krasznahorkai on the unknowable origins of the Alhambra, the monument “for the sight of which there is only a distant mandate . . . [one] can see, in any event, the moment of creation of the world, of course all the while understanding nothing of it.” This distant mandate, also the “bitter ideal” of Mallarmé, is the foundation upon which all works of art are composed―the torment of eros and the intimation of war.

Myth is central to these poems; some are based on the story Cupid and Psyche, others serve as odes to Aphrodite or as explorations of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In Distant Mandate, Mlinko has given us a shimmering and vibrant collection, one that shows us not only how literature imagines itself through life but also how life reimagines itself through literature.

Marvelous Things Overheard: Poems

by Ange Mlinko

A vibrant and eclectic collection from a stunningly mature young poet

"The world―the time has come to say it, though the news will not be welcome to everyone―has no intention of abandoning enchantment altogether." Roberto Calasso's words in Literature and the Gods remind us that, in an age of reason, of mechanization, of alienation, of rote drudgery, we still seek out the transcendent, the marvelous. Ange Mlinko's luminous fourth collection is both a journey toward and the space of that very enchantment.
Marvelous Things Overheard takes its title from a collection of ancient rumors about the lands of the Mediterranean. Mlinko, who lived at the American University of Beirut and traveled to Greece and Cyprus, has penned poems that seesaw between the life lived in those ancient and strife-torn places, and the life imagined through its literature: from The Greek Anthology to the Mu'allaqat. Throughout, Mlinko grapples with the passage of time on two levels: her own aging (alongside the growing up of her children) and the incontrovertible evidence of millennia of human habitation.
This is an assured and revealing collection, one that readers will want to seek refuge in again and again.

Difficult Ornaments Florida and the Poets

by Ange Mlinko

This is a book about the works that six twentieth-century American poets created in and about the state of Florida--or, in one case, refused to create. Those poets who nourished their muse on Florida's landscape, history, and myths in turn helped perpetuate those myths: they keep an idea of Florida alive in the cultural imagination and in the language. They were not regional poets, because they did not live here permanently. But they do contribute to a psychogeography: theirs is a Florida that one can access from anywhere in the world through the pages of their books.

It so happens that these poets compose a chain of personal friendship and influence: Marianne Moore was friendly with Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop was friendly with Moore, James Merrill was friendly with Bishop, and socialized frequently with Harry Mathews when both had houses in Key West. Only Riding, who rose to prominence in the 1920s, gave up poetry around 1941, and moved to Wabasso in 1943 to live an isolated existence, stands apart. And yet there are correspondences to be drawn between her work and Merrill's, for instance.

The word "ornament" is used by both biologists and literary critics to describe the extras of beauty; but whether it is the encumbrance of a peacock's tail or the profusion of metaphor, ornaments are also seen as "difficult." What is it about "difficult ornaments" that make poems surprising, distinctive, and enduring? And does a proximity to the tropics-nature's own laboratory-compel poets to reach for invention and experiment? Does Florida contribute to an "evolution" of poetics? That's what this book explores.

Foxglovewise Poems

by Ange Mlinko

Ange Mlinko, whose poetry is “irresistible” (Los Angeles Review of Books), opens our perception of other lives, or lives unlived.

Foxglovewise is, at its core, a response to the singular experience of the loss of one’s parents. It begins at an Eastern Orthodox Epiphany ritual in Florida and ends in a cemetery in Los Angeles. Yet, as with Ange Mlinko’s other books of poetry, the collection uses geography as a trope for the ways in which we try to map out our lives and make them legible, even as poetry, music, and paintings suggest that much of what happens, or matters, to us is “not on the maps” (not to mention “the apps”). Whether it’s Europa borne over the waves, or gravestones bearing aliases rather than birth names, or books bequeathed to us by relatives in languages we can’t read, we live “up in the air” or “on the wing” and not in fixed coordinates.

Mlinko's poetry is suffused with wit, erudition, beauty, and boundless energy. As Declan Ryan wrote of her work in The Times Literary Supplement, “A reader could be merely dazzled by all this surface stylishness . . . but then they would miss the heart beneath it all.” Foxglovewise is a direct line to the author’s heart.

Liberties Journal of Culture and Politics Fall 2024 Volume 5, Issue 1

by Ange Mlinko, David Grossman, Sean Wilentz, Ramachandra Guha, Sanford Levinson, William Deresiewicz, Steven B. Smith, Sohrab Ahmari, Jack M. Balkin, Ryan Ruby, Devin Johnston, Erica McAlpine, Jonathan Zimmerman, Katherine C. Epstein, Mark Edmondson, Annie Abrams

Liberties is an independent quarterly journal of ideas that publishes serious, stylish, and controversial essays about significant issues in culture and politics.

In the Fall 2024 issue of Liberties: Sean Wilentz bluntly defines the stakes of this election; Katherine C. Epstein laments the death of research and its consequences for our culture; Ryan Ruby presides over the unlikely meeting of Emily Dickinson and Franz Kafka; Mark Edmondson diagnoses the fever in contemporary politics; Sohrab Ahmari exposes the sordid depths to which rightwing extremism has sunk; Jonathan Zimmerman pushes back against the opponents of higher education; Jack M. Balkin and Sanford Levinson argue that "We The People" is not as clear as it looks; William Deresiewicz describes what is absent from social relations in America; Ramachandra Guha introduces the founding poet of the environmental movement, Rabindranath Tagore; Ange Mlinko resurrects the art of Amy Clampitt; Steven B. Smith reveals what is truly revolutionary about our sixteenth president; in Teaching Ellison by Annie Abrams: A high school teacher, a great writer, and how to live; Celeste Marcus on a film, a great director, and the rise of fascism; Leon Wieseltier examines the grotesque intellectual underpinnings of Trumpism and Vanceism; and new poetry from David Grossman, Erica McAlpine and Devin Johnston.

Liberties features essays from leading op-ed writers and scholars, award-winning and well-known non-fiction and fiction writers, next generation rising talents, and poets from around the world.

There's a reason why cultural warriors, political leaders, opinion makers, and engaged citizens from across political and cultural spectrum read and cherish Liberties.