On the Planet without Visa

This rediscovered New York School poet reveals a unique poetry marked by a very contemporary multicultural, polylinguistic style.

Sotère Torregian, an American poet of Ethiopian, Arabic, Greek, Armenian, and Moorish ancestry, approaches the world with an open-armed embrace of distant and diverse phenomena. His surreal lyricism infuses observations of politics, popular culture, and the everyday with generosity, absurdity, and a spirit of adventure.

Publication date: August 14, 2012

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 6 x 9

Page count: 300 pages

ISBN: 9781566893015

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Sotère Torregian has taught at the Free University of New York, Santa Clara University, and Stanford University, where he helped establish the Afro-American studies program in 1969. Author of the poetry collection, On the Planet without Visa, he teaches at the University of the Pacific and resides in Stockton, California.

“On the Planet reminds readers that poets and their craft do not fade as easily as the movements they are divided. The poems are proof that experiments with words and image are like a journey in exile—without an end.”

—Los Angeles Review

“Sotère Torregian’s On the Planet without Visa has its lyricism and eats it too. . . . ‘Introduction to (MY) Théatres (AD 1966-2007)’ reveals a background interest that shows part of what makes this work so open and exact at the same time.” 

—Galatea Resurrects

“Sotère Torregian has a lot to say about current politics and culture, which he does with punchy, over-the-edge lyricism in On the Planet without Visa: Selected Poetry and Other Writings.” 

—Library Journal

“One of our most radically original poets.”

—Anne Waldman

“[Torregian’s] poetry often moves at dazzling speed, connecting absurd but astonishingly concrete imagery that challenges a reader's expectations of the poem.”

—Dale Smith