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New California Poetry
The Totality for Kids
The Totality for Kids is the second collection of poems by Joshua Clover, whose debut, Madonna anno domini, won the Walt Whitman award from the Academy of American Poets. This volume takes as its subject the troubled sleep of late modernity, from the grandeur and failure of megacities to the retreats and displacements of the suburbs. The power of crowds and architecture commingles with the alienation and idleness of the observer, caught between “the brutal red dream/Of the collective” and “the parade/Of the ideal citizen.” The book’s action takes place in these gaps, “dead spaces beside the endlessly grieving stream.” The frozen tableau of the spectacle meets its double in the sense that something is always about to happen. Political furies and erotic imaginings coalesce and escape within a welter of unmoored allusions, encounters, citations, and histories, the dreams possible within the modern’s excess of signification—as if to return revolutionary possibility to the regime of information by singing it its own song.
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published April 10, 2006
About the author
Joshua Clover
22 books72 followersJoshua Clover was an American poet, writer, professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Davis, and revolutionary.
He was a published scholar, poet, critic, and journalist whose work has been translated into more than a dozen languages; his scholarship on the political economy of riots has been widely influential in political theory. He appeared in three editions of The Best American Poetry and two times in Best Music Writing, and received an individual grant from the NEA as well as fellowships from the Cornell Society for the Humanities, the University of California Humanities Research Institute, and Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick. His first book of poetry, Madonna anno domini, received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets in 1996.
He was a published scholar, poet, critic, and journalist whose work has been translated into more than a dozen languages; his scholarship on the political economy of riots has been widely influential in political theory. He appeared in three editions of The Best American Poetry and two times in Best Music Writing, and received an individual grant from the NEA as well as fellowships from the Cornell Society for the Humanities, the University of California Humanities Research Institute, and Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick. His first book of poetry, Madonna anno domini, received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets in 1996.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
May 14, 2009
as the wag has it: leisure for the theoried class!
very occasionally too smartypants for me when it doesn't pulse with that lyrical romanticism it seems to aim for. but very often very beautiful.
funny lines like: "No one gets to heaven on the Rue Asymptote" (11)
and perfect variations on old themes, like
And so on, as one always arriving
Out of the faraway-far. The city
Where we rose slick into the rude rafters
Of the second story dazed after sex.
Inside that hangs the famed Somnopolis,
Purenight city leaking Seconal light (12)
and easy turns like: "The sun kept the dayjail, / The nightjail had no keeper at all. His eyelids stuttered" (22) and made-to-look-easy images like: "The flowers lie fat on the field under the gong-filled air" (23) pepper heavily a whole cloth made of hip referents, headhurting mindgames, and slash or trippy buildups, like "The famous and the dead have learned to fall between our eyes / And their forms in heaven: a philosophical eclipse" (42)
"No More Boffins" is (and maybe the whole is) a sort of rewriting of ashbery's "The Other Tradition" with just as many good tshirt slogans: "At this time the movies were extremely popular / Although no more than usual" (25)
their easy parsability set these poems on the near near side of the avant-garde and their admitted channeling of o'hara and ashbery is neither death-defying nor sublimely monkish. but on the other hand they can appear drop-dead gorgeous as only those whose fashion is perfectly timed can be.
The sun tutoyers me! Adrift beyond heroic realism
In the postmodern sublime where every window can lie
Like a priest, adrift in the utopia for bourgeois kittens
......................................................
By the way Joshua why are you so obsessed with the modern
And its endnotes, what about going to bed in the sensuous
Now and Here, you know, the sublime sublime? These are all
Good questions, which explains how you got to be the sun (64)
very occasionally too smartypants for me when it doesn't pulse with that lyrical romanticism it seems to aim for. but very often very beautiful.
funny lines like: "No one gets to heaven on the Rue Asymptote" (11)
and perfect variations on old themes, like
And so on, as one always arriving
Out of the faraway-far. The city
Where we rose slick into the rude rafters
Of the second story dazed after sex.
Inside that hangs the famed Somnopolis,
Purenight city leaking Seconal light (12)
and easy turns like: "The sun kept the dayjail, / The nightjail had no keeper at all. His eyelids stuttered" (22) and made-to-look-easy images like: "The flowers lie fat on the field under the gong-filled air" (23) pepper heavily a whole cloth made of hip referents, headhurting mindgames, and slash or trippy buildups, like "The famous and the dead have learned to fall between our eyes / And their forms in heaven: a philosophical eclipse" (42)
"No More Boffins" is (and maybe the whole is) a sort of rewriting of ashbery's "The Other Tradition" with just as many good tshirt slogans: "At this time the movies were extremely popular / Although no more than usual" (25)
their easy parsability set these poems on the near near side of the avant-garde and their admitted channeling of o'hara and ashbery is neither death-defying nor sublimely monkish. but on the other hand they can appear drop-dead gorgeous as only those whose fashion is perfectly timed can be.
The sun tutoyers me! Adrift beyond heroic realism
In the postmodern sublime where every window can lie
Like a priest, adrift in the utopia for bourgeois kittens
......................................................
By the way Joshua why are you so obsessed with the modern
And its endnotes, what about going to bed in the sensuous
Now and Here, you know, the sublime sublime? These are all
Good questions, which explains how you got to be the sun (64)
May 3, 2011
Clover's most recent book of poetry, "The Totality of Kids", maintains a focus on the urban, the metropolis, despite its seemingly scattered references and many intertwining themes. A fabulous combination of intellect, wit, and biting sarcasm with respect to the modern era overrun with socialites and directed by pop culture, "The Totality of Kids" manages to harp on the newest generation's obsessions with originality and escape without sounding too much like a bitter outcast that often translates in similarly themed works. One thing that I found especially interesting was Clover's ability to link different poems throughout the collection, like "A Boy's Own Story", "Kantine", and "Auteur Theory", which repeat a list of places and scenarios, in no specific order, over and over. Despite containing the same words and phrases, the order in which Clover arranges them (thus creating a new poem) adds new poetic meaning. Though often criticized, I feel as if such an open-ended interpretation and approach to poetry is what truly makes it artistic; giving the reader the power and even ability to interpret and make meaning out of the work presented by the author, in the successful manner that Clover does, is what truly makes the collection for me.
What makes me especially partial to Clover's collection are the never-ending references to popular culture and social media and the way in which he manages to spin the two effortlessly. The social commentary rampant throughout the collection truly resonated with me, one of my favorite lines coming from "Poem (We always send it to the wrong address)":
We lie down in categories
And wake up in concepts but must there be so much of the day spent
tracking stray remarks and others' hearts
And maintaining a casual balance between Oxycontin and "poetic prose"
So new sensations emerge? Meanwhile but I am happy
To see you! Its enough but not of anything.
The incredible depth of the commentary that Clover manages to convey in what is normally considered shallow muses and trivial thoughts of youth is something that most audiences can relate to, having either already experienced the same feeling or currently going through them. Furthermore, the melodramatic flare that most people regard such adolescent topics with is not at all overdone, but rather delicately placed with just the right amount of genuine truth and regard. The way in which the tone changes from 'new sensations emerge?' to 'Meanwhile I am happy to see you!' is the perfect example of such, perfectly capturing the shallow, fake overtones that have come to overrule social interactions today.
An important thing to note about Clover's style is his limited use of punctuation; commas are mostly lacking and run-on sentences appear in just about every poem. While this aspect of poetry generally bothers me, I feel as if this adds so much more to his work; it lends the work yet another genuine feeling, as if you are actually speaking or reading the thoughts of an adolescent. Also, the variation in line breaks works nicely throughout the collection, a specific example of innovative breaks and text design is "CA IRA", in which the different lines are fashioned around a circle, in a sun-like design. The freedom to arrange the clauses in any order resonates with the adolescent feel of the entire collection, a recklessness and youthful abandon that makes the collection at once fun, refreshing, and absolutely believable and endearing.
What makes me especially partial to Clover's collection are the never-ending references to popular culture and social media and the way in which he manages to spin the two effortlessly. The social commentary rampant throughout the collection truly resonated with me, one of my favorite lines coming from "Poem (We always send it to the wrong address)":
We lie down in categories
And wake up in concepts but must there be so much of the day spent
tracking stray remarks and others' hearts
And maintaining a casual balance between Oxycontin and "poetic prose"
So new sensations emerge? Meanwhile but I am happy
To see you! Its enough but not of anything.
The incredible depth of the commentary that Clover manages to convey in what is normally considered shallow muses and trivial thoughts of youth is something that most audiences can relate to, having either already experienced the same feeling or currently going through them. Furthermore, the melodramatic flare that most people regard such adolescent topics with is not at all overdone, but rather delicately placed with just the right amount of genuine truth and regard. The way in which the tone changes from 'new sensations emerge?' to 'Meanwhile I am happy to see you!' is the perfect example of such, perfectly capturing the shallow, fake overtones that have come to overrule social interactions today.
An important thing to note about Clover's style is his limited use of punctuation; commas are mostly lacking and run-on sentences appear in just about every poem. While this aspect of poetry generally bothers me, I feel as if this adds so much more to his work; it lends the work yet another genuine feeling, as if you are actually speaking or reading the thoughts of an adolescent. Also, the variation in line breaks works nicely throughout the collection, a specific example of innovative breaks and text design is "CA IRA", in which the different lines are fashioned around a circle, in a sun-like design. The freedom to arrange the clauses in any order resonates with the adolescent feel of the entire collection, a recklessness and youthful abandon that makes the collection at once fun, refreshing, and absolutely believable and endearing.
March 24, 2008
Thanks Robb for pointing me in this direction. Partner The Totality with Reverse Rapture as one of the best books of poetry I've read this year. (A preference for big sprawly, ambitious bastards? maybe). & it's with no small amount of shame that I say this, because while the melancholy luster of his late summer in a metropolis/weird lights at the edge of consciousness imagery is easy to appreciate, a passing familiarity with Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Guy Debord and others in the Po-Mo canon is necessary to access some of the wit behind Clover's strategies of composition. Fuck me.
So I found it difficult to write anything that would help convey my enthusiasm without resorting to enthusiasm killing jargon. But here we go...
While some of his poems seem to be fueled by all Adorno-esque (oop, I blew it) end of civilization sentiment ("A-Shaped Gate" - The city grows westward without any captain or brave music. / It makes other cities look like ponies wandering the plains...You have been exiled from exile to memorize the murder ballads), the more frequent impulse of the book is to juxtapose these Important kind of sentiments with the absurd: "Little tasks, / Large problems, philosophers say: Who will do the laundry / Now that history is coming to an end?" (from "No More Boffins). He seems to mock the familiar position of the urbanite whose gaze wonders through his environment, constructing, seemingly at random, a larger, totalizing meaning. His city is sheathed in mirrors, lenses, O's that recall the eye. That is, it reflects a structure we've been taught to seek. What makes this Clover so cagey is that his poems seem to be so often phrased from the perspective of this urbanite at the feast table of his own environment--this keeps them from seeming like too much of an indictment, too overtly declamatory. Similarly, Clover both gratifies the reader with his image making wizardry and mocks us with its effortless abundance and his insistence on turning his images in on themselves.
Parable Lestrange:
Sign says one is always approaching the river.
Through the metropolis through duration.
Past the windows of the wine merchant the bookseller the butcher.
And each has smeared with bars of soap pale prices there.
C went with his very being toward language.
Later this was discovered to be a way-things-are.
A motion without a mate in which we all paraded.
Lonely soldiers.
Behind the long spinning water a windowless room.
Here at zero his name zeroes.
Things and the ghost-characters of things in sexual embrace.
The odalisque asleep by the inkwell.
Note also the craft--certain prominent sounds seem to echo each other across the space of the line without being too obtrusive. A lot more could be said, and better. This is a little.
So I found it difficult to write anything that would help convey my enthusiasm without resorting to enthusiasm killing jargon. But here we go...
While some of his poems seem to be fueled by all Adorno-esque (oop, I blew it) end of civilization sentiment ("A-Shaped Gate" - The city grows westward without any captain or brave music. / It makes other cities look like ponies wandering the plains...You have been exiled from exile to memorize the murder ballads), the more frequent impulse of the book is to juxtapose these Important kind of sentiments with the absurd: "Little tasks, / Large problems, philosophers say: Who will do the laundry / Now that history is coming to an end?" (from "No More Boffins). He seems to mock the familiar position of the urbanite whose gaze wonders through his environment, constructing, seemingly at random, a larger, totalizing meaning. His city is sheathed in mirrors, lenses, O's that recall the eye. That is, it reflects a structure we've been taught to seek. What makes this Clover so cagey is that his poems seem to be so often phrased from the perspective of this urbanite at the feast table of his own environment--this keeps them from seeming like too much of an indictment, too overtly declamatory. Similarly, Clover both gratifies the reader with his image making wizardry and mocks us with its effortless abundance and his insistence on turning his images in on themselves.
Parable Lestrange:
Sign says one is always approaching the river.
Through the metropolis through duration.
Past the windows of the wine merchant the bookseller the butcher.
And each has smeared with bars of soap pale prices there.
C went with his very being toward language.
Later this was discovered to be a way-things-are.
A motion without a mate in which we all paraded.
Lonely soldiers.
Behind the long spinning water a windowless room.
Here at zero his name zeroes.
Things and the ghost-characters of things in sexual embrace.
The odalisque asleep by the inkwell.
Note also the craft--certain prominent sounds seem to echo each other across the space of the line without being too obtrusive. A lot more could be said, and better. This is a little.
March 22, 2008
Although seemingly a fan of 'heavy modernism' or the ponderous terror of aporia, these prose pieces are really nice to read,
especially if a person knows anything about some of the references ie Robert Delaunay, Benjamin, etc..
"noircotic ink" i thought was very nice, and really i like all
these gewgaws of a privileged education in poetry as well
as many of the cliches ie 'end of history' and whatever others
there might be.
all that might sound like i didnt like the book, i did,
but i think i am just jaded because of years of subscriptions
to art magazines, content has sort of become a bore, but there
are some really gorgeous sentences and thoughts in here, and some that illuminate some of these themes that seem a little
dead now
plus, there's a great deal of humor..
for instance a poem called Aporia starts off with the word
Peoria! haha..
And let's face it, it IS pretty cool to say history ended
with El Lissitzky. I have those MIT books myself!
But that really just denies a whole world of really cool kooks like all the Japanese Concrete Poets, or whoever..
This book is good, but suffers I think by being BY and FOR
a certain TYPE of contemporary intellectual, probably someone like me who does own the Passagenwerk, but who also knows
Benjamin lived with Uexkull for a time in Capri..
Capri!
Capri!
August 27, 2014
i loved all of these poems, they were beautiful + funny & this book has the greatest index of all time. there is also a pony poem in here that has these lines:
The city grows westward without any captain of brave music.
It makes other cities look like ponies wandering the plains.
here is another poem i really loved:
http://curdspluswhey.tumblr.com/post/...
The city grows westward without any captain of brave music.
It makes other cities look like ponies wandering the plains.
here is another poem i really loved:
http://curdspluswhey.tumblr.com/post/...
August 14, 2007
This is an interesting book of poetry written, one might say, after poetry and theory have converged. One thinks of Steven's poem "Towards a Supreme Fiction," which simultaneously acts as poetry and analyzes it and prescribes it. Clover's work is heavily laden with the theories of Walter Benjamin and Theodore Adorno - late inheritors of the the dialectic and renovators of marxism. At points, Clover's adoption of this theoretic-poetic mode is a little clunky, but, surprisingly, he makes it work, by folding it into the subject matter. The poems seem constantly to be asking: How do I describe my thoughts and desires when they are always already described, when they are always already cliches or brandnames? The result is systematic engagement with questions of nostalgia and a general feeling of lateness, as if one had come in at the tail-end of a new-years eve party, when it's 1am and the celebration is winding down. But at the edge of every line there is a sense of what Benjamin called the new beauty to be found in the passing away of an era. In Clover, this new beauty seems to locate itself in colors (blues, reds, and yellows especially). Let me include a few lines from one of the poems, "No More Boffins": "Little tasks, / Large problems, philosophers say: Who will do the laundry / Now that history is coming to an end? What advantage / Would someone have over me who knew a direct route / From blue to yellow, far from this shady way station / Where we dream aimlessly of love in the afternoon, / the post-historical kind?" (24-5).
October 14, 2007
Scary good, this one. It took Joshua Clover ELEVEN YEARS to get this book together, and one can instantly see the meticulous care on the page. Not a wasted word, not a wasted musical turn--this is a nice move toward that nebulous thing that sits just beyond post-modernism (neo-romaticism?). The ironies here are no longer jokes, but poignant breaths of recognition of what it is to be stuck in the current world historical.
March 20, 2015
Gimmicky, but the gimmicks are generally good. Occasional unforgivable stunts ("Exclamation point!" [from "At the Atelier Teleology," shortly after which the poet refers to himself by name—it is safe to refer to this poem as the nadir of this collection]) but was usually pretty charming ("X continued to equal Y/ But only as a sort of courtesy" [from "Late Style"]).
October 14, 2008
Pretty brilliant stuff. Wasn't sure at first, but I enjoyed the reading so kept on, and then became dazzled by the text. Love the index in the back. I re-read the poems, referencing the index, and the poems were all the richer. I had to buy myself a copy.
April 5, 2015
Good poet.
June 11, 2021
Ambiguous maze. That's all I have to say.
October 30, 2019
Did not like this work at all- reminded me of middle aged men who continue to pretend to be skateboarders. I really tried. Sigh.
June 2, 2026
Epic Bacon
August 1, 2020
Day 1 of #TheSealeyChallenge
A lovely gift with language, though it takes a bit to learn how to read Clover. Not the first I've read by him, but the first book, I think. Too much Paris? Best when he gets a bit of momentum going.
A lovely gift with language, though it takes a bit to learn how to read Clover. Not the first I've read by him, but the first book, I think. Too much Paris? Best when he gets a bit of momentum going.
March 17, 2008
I don't read poetry like ever, so I don't really have an ear for or understanding of it, so I probably shouldn't give this two stars, especially since the guy who recommended it to me knows what he's talking about, and I don't, but I just wasn't that stoked on this guy's stuff. Some cool images, and you could tell there was something buried in the language, but I wasn't perceptive or versed enough to dig it up.
January 21, 2014
A tiger leap into the modernist past that sifts its fragments for an Utopian future, but worries at the same time that what we might get instead is repetition without a difference. Somehow T. S. Eliot and not. Only for the theory-initiated and the whip-smart. References to Benjamin and Liz Phair! Civilization and barbarism! Letters and sodas!
September 11, 2007
Sometimes difficult, always rewarding, this book of poetry constructs and deconstructs the architecture of American culture and the space we live in. One of my favorite books of poetry.
November 9, 2009
this book blew my mind a little bit
October 15, 2010
nice new poetry
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews