NIV: 39 & 27 by Nicholas Hayes

In Nicholas Alexander Hayes’ radical re-composition of the Gideon’s Bible, Thirst cries, the law dies a curse in a tent and A fool multiplies words.  Founded by two American businessmen who met on a trip at the end of the 19th century, the Gideons International still places bibles in motel rooms across America for the comfort of travelers who think they have reached the end of the road.   Distilling each book of the Old and New Testaments into short texts of 39 and 27 words, Hayes invents a ghost-bible whose ancient imagery transcends the tenets of Christianity.  The Lord seeks atonement. Who doesn’t?  Wise are those who lament.  Inventive and haunting, these poems rip epic and parable open to reveal the search for solace that lies at the heart of all religious writing.

—Chris Kraus

In this book, Nicholas Alexander Hayes has reinvented the quintessential story of stories. Re-imagining the Holy Bible and the Bhagavad-Gita, NIV 39 & 27 takes us on a journey spanning East and West, repositioning immanence and transcendence, the divine and the earthly across deserts, oceans and cities populated by exalted princes, pharaohs, fishermen and maidservants during times of destruction and peace, rebellion and acquiescence, enlightenment and delusion. NIV 39 & 27. In its arresting and startling use of language, promises to enthrall, amuse and surprise. Postmodernism has reached its zenith and the divine of tongues has spread its wings across these pages.

—Sigrid Hackenberg Almansa

In Nicholas Alexander Hayes’ debut volume, the Dadaist transforms his inchoate sensibility into a form of exegesis. He re-gifts the “gift”of Gideon bibles found in motel drawers, the Baghavad-Gita handed out in airports. Sometimes damage is itself a form of readerly, writerly love. Out of the harm imposed on these holy texts a new whole emerges, transmuting received wisdom into new propositions, fully filled with the echo of the thought they both betray and express, or re-express, with a strange and haunting wisdom of their own. The result is no joke. The result is a book compulsively readable and, running counter to that fine quality, a set of sentences almost philosophical in their power—sentences which stop the reader from turning the page because the reader’s mind has suddenly been opened.

— Dan Beachy-Quick

Revising rule and ritual of the holy books, the speaker of these re-tellings drips distorted light on some of the ancient obsessions to make them appear strange in their familiarity and familiar in their strangeness. With a mathematical precision and the patience of an engineer, Nicholas Alexander Hayes’ first book offers holy enemies, licked-up Lords and unclean priests, harlot judges, names that burn,
locusts who attack lions, and borders that force peace. Here is a world where a dependence on narrative is both necessary and dangerous, where faith is a feeling to be feared.

— Daniel Borzutzky

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Nicholas Alexander Hayes is the founding editor at Ignavia Press. He is currently working on contemporary retellings of Greek Myths with Terri Griffith.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 99 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 9781935402503

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