Under World Arrest

by Clayton Eshleman

"What is missing?” The question echoes throughout a sprawling collection. For this poet, our present age is marked by an absurd level of cruelty and violence; and poetry, if it is to address that at all, must rise to the same frenetic level. As he points out, “Look what men do to women. Why should art be less?” With such an intent in mind, one might anticipate a certain amount of moralizing. But Clayton Eshleman gives the collection a refreshingly bizarre array of imagery through which incidents like the Bosnian civil war are viewed.
Eshleman is a reverse prophet, returning to 13,000 B.C. to crouch in a cave of ancient paintings and describe our world on the wall.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published May 1, 1994

About the author

Eshleman is an American poet, translator, and editor.

Eshleman has been translating since the early 1960s. He and José Rubia Barcia jointly prepared The Complete Posthumous Poetry of César Vallejo (1978) and won the U.S. National Book Awardin category Translation. He has also translated books by Aimé Césaire (with Annette Smith), Pablo Neruda, Antonin Artaud, Vladimir Holan, Michel Deguy and Bernard Bador.

Eshleman founded and edited two of the most seminal and highly-regarded literary magazines of the period, Caterpillar and Sulfur.

Sometimes he is mentioned in the company of the "ethno-poeticists" associated with Jerome Rothenberg, including: Armand Schwerner, Rochelle Owens, Kenneth Irby, Robert Kelly, Jed Rasula, Gustaf Sobin, and John Taggart. He is now Professor Emeritus at Eastern Michigan University.

Reviews

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not for everyone. Not for me, really—too much Artaud and Reich. But Eshleman's skill and vision are undeniable.