New Vrindaban lives in the disputed territory between the past and present, between the idealistic theory and the muddied praxis. An electrifying collision of uniquely Appalachian cultural forces, the formal division of poems into “Side One” and “Side Two” pay homage to the concept albums of 1970s garage rock, while the book’s title alludes to the once-flourishing intentional community in West Virginia of the same era. Though New Vrindiban taught Hindu practices to educate members in a less materialistic lifestyle, ideological corruption, and fraudulent leadership had critically destabilized the community by 1990.
Jacob Strautmann’s latest collection, too, builds an extraordinary temple on the compromised ground — it houses the compressed narratives of varied characters, monumentalizes the beautiful illusions of failed ideas, and remembers the irretrievable innocent love of youth. The music of New Vrindaban is both a ballad of survivor’s guilt and the raucous soundtrack of a record party among friends. It is the “black swift-moving waters,” “the bright clouds unmoored in the wind.”
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