War on Words : The John Bradley/Tomaz Salamun* Confusement.
Featuring Correspondence and Occasional Outbursts of Poetry
by Tomaz Salamun* and John Bradley
With a Preface by Patti Smith
ISBN: 0975922734
$15
http://www.blazevox.org/bk-jb.htm
http://www.cafepress.com/blazevox.54868493
"Wow! It might be Nonsalamuns may not enjoy as much as I did, but for our
tribe--- I went through different stages: shock, amazement, I was pale,
laughter - a lot -, awe, guilt, aphssss!, even my mind wanted to take off
for a moment, but mostly gratitude, I was moved; I am moved."
- Tomaz Salamun
In the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, near the end of the
sketch, "The Funniest Joke in the World" (which chronicles the exploits of
"the killer joke"), Eric Idle soberly announces, "In 1945, Peace broke out.
It was the end of the Joke. Joke warfare was banned at a special session of
the Geneva Convention." John Bradley similarly investigates the inside-out
of things in his explosive new book, War on Words, in which the "war" he
wages on conventional language, on our bought and staid habits of mind, is a
discursive demolition that interrogates the contamination of the very root
systems of our words and concepts of "ownership," "voice," and "intellectual
property." Profoundly Surreal, but never merely clever, Bradley's work
glistens with the ebullience of the 1920's Libertine, sounding him as a
clear inheritor of La Revolution Surrealiste, and his poems are as
remarkable, meaningful, and necessary as anything being written today. War
on Words is an extraordinary book, seriously playful in the ways
anthropologist Clifford Geertz might describe the significance of "deep
play" among the indigenous cultures of Bali. I have read Bradley's work
faithfully for more than 25 years, and it is no exaggeration to say he is
one of the two or three most important poets among us. But for those of you
who distrust enthusiasm, earned and tempered in this case as it most
certainly is, let me simply say, "This is a good book. I like it a lot."
-George Kalamaras
John Bradley is one of the hidden Greats. And this utterly riveting Poetic
Detective story is the greatest collaboration in American poetry since Jack
Spicer's After Lorca. It will also prove to be, I have no doubt, Tomaz
Salamun's most famous book.
-Kent Johnson
John Bradley received an MA in English from Colorado State University and an
MFA in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University. His book of
poetry Love-In-Idleness won the Washington Prize. He is the editor of Atomic
Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age and Learning to Glow: A Nuclear
Reader. Bradley lives with his wife, Jana, in DeKalb, where he teaches
writing at Northern Illinois University. He is the recipient of a National
Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in poetry.
--
Best, Geoffrey
Geoffrey Gatza
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