Bad times

by Philip Terry

“If the poet is ‘like a satirist in a police state,’ because s/he will be driven out as soon as they name the corrupt; and if disgust, outrage and pain of defeat, whose intensity is fed by impotence, are accurate to the current situation, this is also an intensity that can dissipate in language ruled by fetishism of slogans and characters. Into this situation, Philip Terry brings the rhetoric of du Bellay’s sonnets and this enables him to make plain statements of truth. He translates, inside the extreme abjectness of now, the rhetoric of classical sonnets of the sixteenth century when rhetoric, as the support of a reciprocity, albeit hierarchical, gave form to public life. Terry’s book reveals how language that would support social mutuality is now extremely difficult. The present time of this book is the situation of the university, now a ‘knowledge gateway’, in Britain, where language degraded by managers who want to make knowledge a commodity is in deep collision with the arts as the commons.” - William Rowe

172 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2017