A Knot Is Not a Tangle

by Benjamin Friedlander

Poetry. "Did someone say 'The Runes of Western Civilization'? All the great heresies are poignant rhymes, literate feints and graceless parries, the bogus and the beautiful, elliptical, epochal and incidental, and even a poem—held to a refrigerator by a Goofy magnet—by Carla. The filibuster of philosophical flourishes edited by Kimberly Filbee's philiate (filial) appendex is not to be missed, as this punk spymaster sings the collective nose-ring off our wilting, unwitnessing unconscience."—Brian Kim Stefans

"Diving into the viscera, Ben Friedlander arrives at a poetry fierce with pleasure and dis-ease. A KNOT IS NOT A TANGLE offers a splendid trip through the lurid truths of the world, tied together by a lyric entirely haunted, stark, and clear."—Lisa Jarnot

"Ben has always and variously pusued that point at which his language lifts off from rational sense and allows us to glimpse something else, between the lines, projective. His lyric poems work that line that connects despair to comedy, that tenuous human line. Their mixture of technical human inventiveness and rueful or exuberant recklessness is compelling, going where language leads rather than where it's led, giving up control in order to change, to move, to get somewhere, to travel."—David Levi Strauss

Genres: Poetry

28 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

I'm a poet, critic, and editor, and make my living teaching American Studies and Poetics at the University of Maine. I'm also a dabbler in translation, from German (with a dictionary, making a lot of errors) and Italian (with my wife, who is a native speaker).

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This often absolutely incredible work really deserves a five and a two-and-a-half. I so love the 75% or so I love, and the other 25% or so represents, to me, such a well-executed exemplary collection of what I don't like about intentionally "tasteless" writing (which, incidentally, is not its "tastelessness"). I'll be back with more upon a second reading, one of many with which I plan to reward myself. Yeah, read it. What's good here is what contemporary poetry desperately needs more of.