Designated Heartbeat

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Charles Bernstein (left) and Bruce Andrews, New York City. Photograph © John Tranter, 1997
	Bruce Andrews Designated Heartbeat
	Search for a word or phrase in this book … Biographical note: Bruce Andrews is “a performance artist and poet whose texts are some of the most radical of the Language school; his poetry tries to cast doubt on each and every ‘natural’ construction of language” (The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Literature in English). Andrews is a founding editor of the legendary journal L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, which catalyzed the eponymous poetry movement that emerged in the 1970s and ’80s. His many books include Lip Service, Give ’Em Enough Rope, Designated Heartbeat, Ex Why Zee, Tizzy Boost, and I Don’t Have Any Paper So Shut Up (or, Social Romanticism). BIC Basic EAN13: 9781844710683 ISBN-10: 1844710688 ISBN-13: 9781844710683 Author: Bruce Andrews Title: Designated Heartbeat Series: Salt Modern Poets Product class: BC Language: eng Audience: General/trade BIC subject category: CTCH1 Publisher: Salt Publishing Pub date: 01-Mar-06 Extent: 144pp Height: 216 mm Width: 140 mm Thickness: 9 mm Weight: 216 gms Supplier: Gardners Books Supplier: Ingram Book Group Supplier: Inbooks (James Bennett) Availability: IP Price: GBP 10.99 Price: USD 16.95 Rights: World	See larger image PAPERBACK 20% off at the UK Bookstore! ~~£10.99~~ £8.79 20% off at the US Bookstore! ~~$16.95~~ $13.56	Short description/annotation: In this selection of shorter lyric poems, celebrated Language poet Bruce Andrews offers his charismatic blend of satire, wit and jouissance, creating a dizzying picture of modern America. In these poems Andrews explores a more intimate and domestic register, further reminding us of the astonishing range of this contemporary master. Main description: Table of contents: I Knew the Signs by Their Tents Verbal Sallies “Facts are Stupid things” Did you Really? Lives in Bed Hallway Somehow that’s Just the Way it is and I Just Don’t Really Care Secret Refracted Somewhere Here Countless Count Spinto Time Expansion Black Devo Habit Lasting Kiss Removal Can it Start Fires? Please Please Did M 0 B Danger Risk Hazard Jeopardy Peril Valentines Reverb Sallies Definition View excerpt as PDF: Click here to view a sample (472 KB) Excerpt from book: Lives in Bed Hallway Outmoving the, outfrequenting the — Flippers now colloidal. Can’t float in the logic, exhausted escape habits, choked swimming as a phrase. Dapper delegates? Withheld worth’s cowardice, shiver by name. I can’t need form. Geometry farms. Inside is Close. Vectors from inside out delirium yesterday. Terse ask. Specia–lists disappear, techno–mono. Slang up, yeah? Quiet is a critique. Fond as blasts. Craze with nothing not knowing. The blasts are coming off dice on your head. A kind bends around leaving. Two two. Mobile flavor units easing into eternity. Canopy hegemony, pardon the creatures ending. Girls, is this lapidary? Triple vapid, the harmonic misfires are forming a Union. Goose the substance pronto. Charm all vertical. Loving this colorless, metallically dangerous breathe to mark statutory insti–gations. A flake in vacation. Synapse has its own luggage. Slapping pinks slatting hands. Kneels of boss tongue. Latex motion to be aloof. Custody got late–tags indelibly custarded. Hoops zined. A suspicious voluntary. Templated heart ovum. Sulk schottische. Self volunteers for paradigms. Infallible sobs. Silence jilted. Nothing gathers the walls around you. Silver is knickknacked to death. Strength of your shun. Edges this ragged. Geometry it’s gone. The blood’s favorite game show. Equofinality. Unpublished endorsement : Andrews’ Designated Heartbeat clips in and out of syntax, repetition or surprise. The aesthetic damage and recovery, then damage. It holds you, drops you, sometimes helps you recover. Allen Fisher Unpublished endorsement : “Lexicon seduces” we read in the marvelous poem “I knew the signs by their tents” that opens Designated Heartbeat. Bruce Andrews’ lexicon does indeed “seduce” the reader, what with the “referent burnout” of such pieces as “Verbal Sallies,” a bravura series of quasi-love poems, where we witness the poet, who is “Listening for portraiture,” “sweep the jokes overword.” But where else would one sweep jokes if not “overword”? Andrews’ word invention has never been more dazzling than it is in these profoundly political riffs on the current cultural scene, on the ways we live now—if one can call it “living.” Whether in verse or prose or in concrete visual forms, this is a poetry remarkably attuned to that “referent burnout” we all experience as we make our way through the “success sewage” that surrounds us. Along the way, Designated Heartbeat carries the notion of le mot juste—in all its beauty and rigor—to its illogical conclusion. Marjorie Perloff