Lip Service

by Bruce Andrews

At nearly 400 pages in length, Lip Service is Bruce Andrews' major poetry work of the 1990s. The book is divided into ten 'planets' corresponding to the ten 'bodies' of the Paradiso, each of which is in turn divided into ten sections. Andrews draws on resonances between the semiotic rubble of late capitalist society (overheard or found phrases and words gathered over a four-year period, then meticulously organized and edited) and Charles Singleton's translation of Dante to create a bleak vision of a contemporary world where vanity and self-regard are paramount, love is nothing but pretense and dissimulation, and mutability and immutability are inverted.

Genres: Poetry

384 pages, Paperback

First published March 19, 1997

About the author

Bruce Andrews is an experimental poet, performance artist, literary theorist & recently retired (after 38 years) left-wing professor of political science. As Musical Director for Sally Silvers & Dancers, he has created sound designs and, in performance, live mixes of music & text for over two decades of performances.Most recent of a dozen or so big books is last year’s "You Can’t Have Everything… Where Would You Put It!", followed by a chapbook, "Yessified (Sally’s Edit)" celebrating the Andrews Symposium and its expanded archive, online at www.fordhamenglish.com/bruce-andrews, with links to interviews, performance texts, poetry, collaborations, and critical essays on his work. Another online archive (and interactive project) materialized on April 1, 2014 as a curated 25 hour ‘twitter sculpture’ [Twitter.com @BruceAndrews25h], a 300 poem sequence.

Reviews

[Restfulsimulation · Rating 5 out of 5]

“the foamlike form of work”