The Front

by K. Silem Mohammad

One of the leading flarfists, Kasey Mohammad makes poetry out of unlikely combinations.
Kenny Goldsmith said that “K. Silem Mohammad is the Andy Warhol of contemporary poetry, acutely scraping the bottom of the cultural barrel with such prescience, precision, and sensitivity that we are forced to reevaluate the nature of the language engulfing us.”
Katie Degentesh said, “This book is a ‘violent chainsaw w/fur’.”

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 15, 2009

About the author

K. Silem Mohammad is the author of Deer Head Nation (Tougher Disguises, 2003), A Thousand Devils (Combo Books, 2004), Breathalyzer (Edge Books, 2008), and The Front (Roof Books, 2009). His poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. He is co-editor (with Richard Greene) of the essay collections The Undead and Philosophy: Chicken Soup for the Soulless (Open Court, 2006) and Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy: How to Philosophize with a Pair of Pliers and a Blowtorch (Open Court, 2007). Mohammad edits the poetry journal Abraham Lincoln with Anne Boyer.

Reviews

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Google doesn’t come close to explaining how Mohammad succeeds at turning Tables of Contents into soaring modern poems, and poems into tables of the news we forget every day. The Front finds the risible in miserable, and puts the freak back in critique. “How Songbirds Deal with Large Amounts of Serial Information”? They get it via digest slick with pathos from The Front, because “There are free unicorn rides/less and less everyday”

[Philip Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised to find emotion and poignancy in a book of deliberate absurdities. I think if even only one of these poems was 'good', the book would be worthwhile, but many more of them are--my copy is littered with post-it notes for marking my favorite lines. I'll post some later. I like when Mohammad talks about poetry in his poems, so I'm probably biased in that regard. Seminal flarf poetry, which I'd like to read more of. Will do full review later.

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned that every one of the self-serve machines at Kinko's is an Anne of Green Gables pop-up dollhouse and that Enya is a whore.