Read Me: Selected Works

by Holly Melgard

ART, CRITICISM, HYBRID, POETRY, WOMEN'S STUDIES
Read Me gathers the tools necessary to make sense of contemporary problems so ubiquitous they seem too big to name. Spanning a multiplicity of genres, media, and tonal registers, this book surveys Holly Melgard’s formally experimental poetic works produced between 2008 and 2023, including sound poems, essays on poetics, and books that exploit print on demand to, for example, counterfeit money. In often wildly comic turns of thought, Melgard’s work cleaves personal agency from automated defaults by mapping trauma and technocracy from the inside out. From critical talks to fictional monologues, the poet translates into language the unremarkable torments of neoliberalization in the digital age.

320 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2023

Reviews

[Greg Bem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic collection of original conceptual works and commentary. It's a big book, one that feels visceral as an object, knowing what we carry.

[meow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like “conceptual poetry” because I’m bad at reading “normal” poetry and conceptual poetry is more like a joke or a stunt or an experiment, more openly an encounter that initiates some creativity on the part of the reader which activates in a not-normal-reading way. Like what would a book look like that breaks its printer? What happens if u remove the drone from a Gertrude stein novel? Could you make a picture book out of a single shape? Etc etc. All a whole lot of fun imo. UNTIL one reaches the “Talking” section at the end, which is more biographical about the author and the composition of these poems. All this stuff is NOT a joke. It’s serious business mama. The means of peripheral poetic production are under fire by institutions on the outside and political bad guys on the inside 🥲. Unsure of how I feel about the tonal shift there or if I totally agree w all the political rhetoric that comes forward but whatever I stan holly melgard

[Mikael · Rating 5 out of 5]

probably my fave "selected" of a poet with medium-long career already behind them. UDP does a great job representing holly's conceptual work that includes a POD file of a 700-plus page book containing only blank black pages designed to break printers, and a book called money maker that invites you to print spec-perfect us dollar money and break the law (UDP gets around the legal conundrum by including photos of the book)

the more conventional autobiog "talking" epilogue (incl. "self-interviews") for me strikes almost the perfect balance between conceptual punk not dead 'tude and theory. can't believe i actually read a conceptual poetry werk from cover to cover!

[José Pereira · Rating 3 out of 5]

The essayesq text on having children is one of the smartest, most pointed things I’ve ever read on the subject
The medium-transgressive stuff is inventive but not that meaty.
When Melgard turns long-winded, in the last section, theory brain comes into play and it all gets fiercely vapid and tired.

[Kelsey!!! · Rating 4 out of 5]

lowkey went over my head but still interesting???