The following Editor's Choice review, by Ammiel Alcalay, appears in the
current issue of BOMB Magazine.

To order the book, please visit  http://www.blazevox.org/bk-kj.htm 

Best, Geoffrey

Geoffrey Gatza
BlazeVOX [books]
www.blazevox.org 

*

BOMB 96
Editor's Choice
Ammiel Alcalay on Epigramititis: 118 Living American Poets by Kent Johnson

At the height of the war in Vietnam, Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov
articulated the best of radically different political practices. While
Levertov worked in public opposition, Duncan went "underground,"
striking at the heart of complicity: "We want peace because we are
agonized to realize how much we are involved with and subject to the
will of murderous and conceited men; but the Vietnamese who are fighting
for the truth do not want peace at the sacrifice of their vision of the
good--we, not they, are the ones who need immediate surrender of the war
for the good of our human souls." These many years later, when the
terms of debate and the scale of protest have been entirely predictable,
where it is almost impossible not to be affiliated with the corporate
body of the nation and complicity pervades every core of our being, poet
and translator Kent Johnson has taken up arms in a seemingly marginal
segment of society, that of the "post-avant" poetry scene.

In Epigramititis: 118 Living American Poets, Johnson makes us
understand that the 118 mostly not very well known poets and their
readers whom he satirizes and praises may not be so marginal after all.
In fact, at the receiving end of Johnson's considerable conceptual
acumen and wit, they may very well be representative. The point is that
the consensus of public discourse upon which political power
consolidates itself has to start somewhere, and Johnson takes a scalpel
to these mechanisms in the world he knows best. This insight fuels what
can be a scary book, making readers squirm as they recognize friends,
enemies and poets of "reputation." But precisely because Johnson
names names (each epigram bears a poet's name), we as readers are
called upon to judge our own responses to his mix of invective, humor
and admiration. As the great poet Ed Dorn wrote on an early batch of
these epigrams: "It's about time for something of the sort, what
with the ass licking that rules the day." So far this time bomb has
been tossed around gingerly, but one hopes it explodes in true debate.

Epigramititis: 118 Living American Poets is published by BlazeVOX
[books] Buffalo, New York.