Cutting Time with a Knife

by Michael Leong

Poetry. Asian American Studies. "Like a manual pilfered from an alternate history where science and art never diverged, Michael Leong's new book transforms the periodic table of elements into a kind of concrete poetry. Leong's glowing hieroglyphs show that the poetic Word emerges—as irony from iron —from the whirled atoms of the World itself. Indeed, Leong redefines the space-time of the page as a furnace of pure imagination, where the cadaver of modernist poetics is smelted with black humor, 'form[ing] crystals and other alloys at the boundarues of meaning. Here, we discover that 'Poetry is an ongoing reaction, a turning loose of the future.' For time doesn't exist without the possibility of revolution—and Leong has, in CUTTING TIME WITH A KNIFE, created a true 'chamber of possibilities.'"—Andrew Joron

124 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2012

Reviews

[S. Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and accomplished literary experiment in found verse involving the Burroughs "Cut-Up" technique with Wikipedia to create an Elemental Chart of Poetry.

[Kevin Ng · Rating 4 out of 5]

cool take on poetry and chemistry and time and bodies. leong is talented writer.