Details
Publication Date: 01-Mar-06 | ISBN: 1844710688 | Trim Size: 216 x 140 mm | Extent: 144pp
Synopsis
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.
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
Praise For This Book
“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
““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
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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).
