Poetry on the Edge Epi Poetry The Secret Lives of Vowels
Source: www.litline.org
Topic: Poetry
Sort Desciption: if this is poetry, what isnít; if this isnít poetry, what .... David Kirby reviews After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography edited by Kate Sontag and David ...
Content Inside: B O O K Poetry on the Edge Introduction: John Olson Much of the new writing is the result of rigorously imposed constraints. Languages die for one of two reasons: lack of speakers, or lack of experimentation. The word ex- periment comes from the Latin verb experiri, mean- ing ìto try out.î People experiment when they try out a new word, a new phrase, put a little English or spin on a familiar phrase. Most people do this off the cuff. Writers do it deliberately. Language invites play. In all probability, language is itself the product of play. Yet there is always a segment of the population unnerved and antagonized by linguistic invention. There was great hostility toward the American lan- guage in the mid-eighteenth century emanating from Britain, particularly its stodgier writers such as Samuel Johnson, because of the many changes in its vocabulary and syntax. English, in an effort to de- scribe new terrain, new flora and fauna, had become experimental. New life was injected into the language. I U SED TO B E A SHAMED OF M Y S TRIPED F ACE Mike Topp elimae 822 North Clinton, Dallas, TX 75208 http://www.elimae.com 134 pages; handmade, $19.95 Epi Poetry Doug Nufer Mike Topp is welcome everywhere. Deluxe Rubber Chicken, McSweeneyís, Exquisite Corpse (the defunct magazine, its online edition, and its 1999 Black Sparrow anthology), Talisman, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and New York Press are just a few of his publishers. Set off from the denser ver- biage of its surroundings, Toppography makes a clearing that, in the ruggedly obscure or meticu- lously urbane magazine landscape, gives the mindís eye a place to rest before continuing onward. El- egant, amusing, and often hilarious, these epigram- matic pieces are the kind of guilty pleasures enjoyed by those of us who read the New Yorker mostly for the cartoons. What reader hacking through linguis- tic brambles and slogging through clichÈd muck can resist the sight of a few lines ungoverned by ...
poetry on the edge