This is possibly the funniest post I have ever seen on this list. I
agree and disagree with Kent on his project in an equal balance, and
with Geoffrey. I love them both, but want to snarl, the fundamental
weakness is equating the fuzzy hierarchies of the poetry scene with
the power-dominancies that exist. There is no doubt that both
categories are out there: reputation equals power, but poetic status
is not identical to the many forms of power in the outside world, it
may coincide, but not necessarily so. An obsession with who's who
enlists you in the same imaginary volume.
There ain't no easy answers to this stuff, including that of the blurb-hunter.
Love
Dave
2008/9/5 Geoffrey Gatza <[log in to unmask]>:
>> Homage to the Last Avant-Garde
>>
>> by Kent Johnson
>>
>> Shearsman Books (Exeter, UK, 2008)
>>
>> Paperback, 120pp, 9x6ins, £8.95 / $16
>> ISBN 9781905700950
>>
>> Homage contains a wide variety of poems and prose, representing all strands of
>> Johnson's work: versions from the Greek, traduced to an extraordinary degree;
>> anti-war poems, overflowing with rage; stink-bombs tossed in the direction of
>> some famous poets, mostly meant in an ironic, joshing way. But not all. And
>> then there are memoir poems of persons met and places visited, that may well
>> be documentary in nature, or may also be artfully disguised. Memory is, after
>> all, an awkward thing, and not to be trusted, just as politicians and their
>> henchmen are not and there is no irony in their treatment in this book. No,
>> sir, none at all.
>>
>> *
>>
>> Kent Johnson's poems astonish me, and seem to be a shock for the future. In a
>> time of war and utterly debased conversations on torture and permission,
>> Johnson is our most terrifying parodist, satirist, and dissector of empires.
>> One might think of him as a rather Roman poet of the late empire... He is
>> simply one of the most original and strange poets of the last decades. There
>> is a reason why this poetry seems to be appreciated abroad. In America, he is
>> rejected for breaking a variety of rules, even laws, and his cadenzas are
>> scorned. But actually he is pushing his fingers and a very learned pen harder
>> and faster than most poets alive. The humor of his provocations makes me not
>> so much forgive him but to admire the bliss of language and the Borgesian
>> fiction of his essays, and the essayistic truths of his letters, prose, and
>> paradoxes concerning authorship. (If we thought we knew all this from Borges
>> we were wrong, because now like an onyx the book of sand begins to split into
>> analogies.) His machine-poems kill fascists like a guitar. --David Shapiro
>>
>>
>> Only poets read the kind of poetry written now, even though only poets act as
>> if this isn't the case. This shouldn't be a problem, since books aren't
>> written just for readers; books are written for writing, for literature. But
>> in order to serve writing and literature, there still has to be some idea as
>> to the reader. Without this, there is every reason to have doubt in an
>> "author." It is this doubt that Kent Johnson who, by the way, is my favorite
>> American author, deals with in all of his books. --Semezdin Mehmedinovic
>>
>> Best known for his ties to the Araki Yasusada incident, Kent Johnson is a
>> deadly serious, brilliant subversive. His brand of fiction is derived from the
>> fabulist Borges, Michaux, and magic realism, but with a slightly nasty edge.
>> "I am in awe of you," I e-mailed him recently, and I meant it... --Linh
>> Dinh
>>
>> A poetry embroiled with poetry. Poetry pitched into the flames of its
>> fractious
>> lineage, presented as a colloquy of voicesmost of which never queue you;
>> theyıre all so
>> perfervid to have their say. A signature convention pinched from one poet or
>> another is catalyst enough for Johnsonıs ventriloquy to toggle between papyrus
>> and blogosphere,
>> homage and invective. Farcical, sprawling, lyrical, smashed, shimmering, and
>> without mercy. --C.D. Wright
>>
>> Order now from http://www.shearsman.com/ or (starting September 15)
>> http://www.spdbooks.org/root/index.asp
>>
>>
>>
>
--
David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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