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Illocality
Back in print in this new, revised edition featuring pieces that did not appear in the original, Joseph Massey's Illocality is a revelation of season and setting. In an ironic turn against the collection's title, his poems are all about place, all about the immediacy of the moment. His poems focus on details as small as, "A diseased shrub // [absorbing] / the leftover glow" to bring us a rendering of the beautiful chaos around us which reflects a chaos within. His work has been called a "poetry of the environment," and indeed, while "December / reverberates with decay," in the end the speaker lives life "condensed. . . to forsythia's / rhythm."
134 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 29, 2018
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About the author
Joseph Massey
32 books78 followersJoseph Massey is the author of A New Silence (forthcoming from Shearsman Books), Illocality (Wave Books, 2015) and a trilogy grounded in the landscape of coastal Humboldt County, California: Areas of Fog (Shearsman Books, 2009), At the Point (Shearsman Books, 2011), and To Keep Time (Omnidawn, 2014).
His chapbooks include Minima St. (Range, 2003), Eureka Slough (Effing Press, 2005), Bramble (Hot Whiskey, 2005), Property Line (Fewer & Further, 2006), Out of Light (Kitchen Press, 2008), Within Hours (Fault Line Press, 2008), The Lack Of (Nasturtium Press, 2009), Exit North (Book Thug, 2010), Thaw Compass (Press Board Press, 2014), An Interim (Tungsten Press, 2014), What Follows (Ornithopter Press, 2015), Present Conditions (Hollyridge Press) and 5 Poems (Tungsten Press, 2018).
His work has appeared in many journals and magazines, including The Nation, A Public Space, American Poet: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets, Verse, GeoHumanities, Talisman, and in
anthologies: Visiting Dr. Williams: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of William Carlos Williams (University of Iowa Press, 2011), Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (W.W. Norton & Company, 2013), Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation (Viking Penguin, 2015), The Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them (Belknap Press, 2016), and Renga for Obama (Harvard University Press, 2018).
He worked as an instructor and teaching assistant for the University of Pennsylvania’s ModPo (Modern and Contemporary Poetry) MOOC, which serves thousands of students, worldwide, at no cost. He now teaches privately.
He lives in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.
His chapbooks include Minima St. (Range, 2003), Eureka Slough (Effing Press, 2005), Bramble (Hot Whiskey, 2005), Property Line (Fewer & Further, 2006), Out of Light (Kitchen Press, 2008), Within Hours (Fault Line Press, 2008), The Lack Of (Nasturtium Press, 2009), Exit North (Book Thug, 2010), Thaw Compass (Press Board Press, 2014), An Interim (Tungsten Press, 2014), What Follows (Ornithopter Press, 2015), Present Conditions (Hollyridge Press) and 5 Poems (Tungsten Press, 2018).
His work has appeared in many journals and magazines, including The Nation, A Public Space, American Poet: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets, Verse, GeoHumanities, Talisman, and in
anthologies: Visiting Dr. Williams: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of William Carlos Williams (University of Iowa Press, 2011), Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (W.W. Norton & Company, 2013), Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation (Viking Penguin, 2015), The Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them (Belknap Press, 2016), and Renga for Obama (Harvard University Press, 2018).
He worked as an instructor and teaching assistant for the University of Pennsylvania’s ModPo (Modern and Contemporary Poetry) MOOC, which serves thousands of students, worldwide, at no cost. He now teaches privately.
He lives in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.
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