The Invisible World Is in Decline

by Bruce Whiteman

This continuing prose poem attempts to come to terms with some of the most basic human experiences, from sex and language to the central place of light in our lives. Book V continues these obsessions, particularly the relationship between the body and the world and the experience of light; it adds a number of new ones as well. The failed artist is imagined as a consummate forger, expertly capable of mimicry, but wholly a fraud at any genuine work or feeling. A religious impetus, largely unstated until now, begins to be consecrated in this book with a series of short lyric poems concerning the redemptive qualities of love. The Invisible World Is in Decline stands in the line of the 20th-century long poem whose writers-from Pound to Zukofsky to Blaser and bp Nichol-have been strong influences. The prose poem form links the work to the earliest roots of modernism in the poetry of writers like Bertrand, Rimbaud, and Baudelaire, but also situates it at the cutting edge of poetic technique.

39 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1984