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Percussion Grenade: Poems & Plays
Music and drama as weapons of productive destruction. This collection by prize-winning, massively influential literary star Joyelle McSweeney explodes the twinned and dangerous notions that images are pretty, and that they land predictably. Power struggles in all contexts and the driving ever-presence of a lexicon of puissance make this a bracing read, not for the faint of heart or mind. From "Guadaloop": Just inside the cutters’ pavilion
Just at the peak of the oxygen tent
Just on the inner lid of the hairline coma
Just on the inner thighs of the medical canal
Just up under the gesso of lubrication
Just up to the hairline of the hairline crack
Just there where the adolescent girl eyes the camera
Just under the burden of her fishscale hair
Just where one sister shoulders the other
Just why should one sister have to shoulder the other
Just while out of the frame the globe unshouldered rolls around like a boulder in the mouth
Just the whole world like a wadded-up burden in the mouth Joyelle McSweeney is the author of five books, including The Red Bird , chosen by Allen Grossman to inaugurate the Fence Modern Poets Series in 2001. McSweeney is a co-founder of Action Books and Action, Yes, a press and web-quarterly for international writing and hybrid forms, and a contributing editor of the culture blog montevidayo.com. She holds degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and the Iowa Writers Workshop, and is an associate professor in the creative writing program at the University of Notre Dame.
Just at the peak of the oxygen tent
Just on the inner lid of the hairline coma
Just on the inner thighs of the medical canal
Just up under the gesso of lubrication
Just up to the hairline of the hairline crack
Just there where the adolescent girl eyes the camera
Just under the burden of her fishscale hair
Just where one sister shoulders the other
Just why should one sister have to shoulder the other
Just while out of the frame the globe unshouldered rolls around like a boulder in the mouth
Just the whole world like a wadded-up burden in the mouth Joyelle McSweeney is the author of five books, including The Red Bird , chosen by Allen Grossman to inaugurate the Fence Modern Poets Series in 2001. McSweeney is a co-founder of Action Books and Action, Yes, a press and web-quarterly for international writing and hybrid forms, and a contributing editor of the culture blog montevidayo.com. She holds degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and the Iowa Writers Workshop, and is an associate professor in the creative writing program at the University of Notre Dame.
96 pages, Paperback
First published May 15, 2012
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About the author
Joyelle McSweeney
27 books64 followersJoyelle McSweeney is a poet, playwright, novelist, critic, and professor at the University of Notre Dame. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard before earning an MPhil from Oxford and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
With Johannes Göransson, McSweeney founded and edits Action Books, an international press for poetry and translation. The press focuses on modern and contemporary works from Latin America, Asia, the US and Europe, including such major authors as Hiromi Itō, Kim Hyesoon, Aase Berg and Raul Zurita. Action Books seeks to move poetry and poetics from other literary cultures into the center of US poetry discussions and undermine the nationalist rubrics under which literature is marketed and discussed. In addition to the University of Notre Dame, McSweeney has taught in the MFA program at the University of Alabama and as a Visiting Associate Professor of Poetry at the Iowa Writers Workshop.
With Johannes Göransson, McSweeney founded and edits Action Books, an international press for poetry and translation. The press focuses on modern and contemporary works from Latin America, Asia, the US and Europe, including such major authors as Hiromi Itō, Kim Hyesoon, Aase Berg and Raul Zurita. Action Books seeks to move poetry and poetics from other literary cultures into the center of US poetry discussions and undermine the nationalist rubrics under which literature is marketed and discussed. In addition to the University of Notre Dame, McSweeney has taught in the MFA program at the University of Alabama and as a Visiting Associate Professor of Poetry at the Iowa Writers Workshop.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 20, 2012
"Like a sidewalk/made smart with brain matter."
The book's humanism and love for existence manifests in a violent lyric protest against violence. I'm not able at the moment to think of another book of poetry more socially engaged where art does not succumb to political purpose. Having finished Jerome Rothenberg's Khurbn a day earlier, I've found my mind now bent on poetry that touches human life. Of course many folks, even poets or self-appointed poets, won't pick up either of those books. The world will rot, I say, but McSweeney offers "translation" out of destruction. She also critiques the hell out of video games and that slickster poser Philip Levine. I find all the same energy of language and image that made Red Bird one of my first adored discoveries among my generation of poets. In fact, the energy has been amped up, especially in the section "Killzone 2," as well as in the verse play, "The Contagious Knives," which resonates with Notley, Stanford, and Blake, probably my three favorite visionary epicists and mini-epicists. McSweeney, like those three, makes the world possible by transforming the image through cycles of terror.
The book's humanism and love for existence manifests in a violent lyric protest against violence. I'm not able at the moment to think of another book of poetry more socially engaged where art does not succumb to political purpose. Having finished Jerome Rothenberg's Khurbn a day earlier, I've found my mind now bent on poetry that touches human life. Of course many folks, even poets or self-appointed poets, won't pick up either of those books. The world will rot, I say, but McSweeney offers "translation" out of destruction. She also critiques the hell out of video games and that slickster poser Philip Levine. I find all the same energy of language and image that made Red Bird one of my first adored discoveries among my generation of poets. In fact, the energy has been amped up, especially in the section "Killzone 2," as well as in the verse play, "The Contagious Knives," which resonates with Notley, Stanford, and Blake, probably my three favorite visionary epicists and mini-epicists. McSweeney, like those three, makes the world possible by transforming the image through cycles of terror.
May 29, 2012
It is as if Joyelle McSweeney uses a new word for every word, so that the texts in this new collection sing always new and lively, making it most definitely a book to read and read and read.
September 12, 2013
This book was not really my cup of tea. I could tell, while reading it, that it was probably something certain types of poets/lovers of poets would like. DISCLAIMER: A note in the beginning of the book says the poems in this book should be read outloud. I DIDN'T read them outloud, and kind of wish I'd read the note before I bought the book-- as I wouldn't have bought it, knowing that I wouldn't have read the poems outloud. So maybe I am not really qualified to "rate" this book at all, as I didn't follow instructions? I liked the play, the second to last section of the book was a play. It was my favorite part. I also PRETENDED as I was reading the poems that I was reading them outloud. Many of them seemed like extended & egregious wordplay to me, rather than poems at times. AGAIN, as I was reading it, I thought that certain kinds of poets/lovers of poetry probably love stuff like this-- just not me.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews