Aerial/Edge

12/03/2014

Heteronomy by Chris Nealon, new from Edge Books

Heteronomy

Chris Nealon

ISBN 1-890311-38-4

80 pgs, Design by Quemadura

2014

$14.00 direct from Aerial/Edge (regularly $20)


Chris Nealon’s Heteronomy is built out of five long poems, including The Dial. Together they form an overlapping set of mediations on love and friendship and political life. Taking inspiration from a long poetic tradition of self-referential frame devices, Nealon wrote the poems so that each refers to the others, and each is built out of poems within poems – like late-capitalist medieval dream visions in which the poet describes writing a poem, or wishes he were writing, or finds himself startled awake. What’s the poem, and what’s the frame? It’s hard to say – and perhaps because of that, these poems find in the figure of the poet an image of embarrassing self-inflation and comic limitation. They are dedicated to everyone who’s felt that way.

Chris Nealon is the author of two books of literary criticism, Foundlings: Lesbian and Gay Historical Emotion before Stonewall (Duke UP, 2001), and The Matter of Capital: Poetry and Crisis in The American Century (Harvard UP, 2011), as well as two earlier books of poems: The Joyous Age (Black Square Editions, 2004), and Plummet (Edge Books, 2009). He teaches in the English Department at Johns Hopkins University, and lives in Washington, DC.

1 Comments:

  • This is for alla the young girls out thar...

    I giveth unto thee,
    my just and worthy liege,
    a wild, odor-free, exaggerated ride;
    yet, intoxicatingly illustrious:
    FASTEN.YOUR.SEAT.BELTS, girl…

    Why else does a moth fly FROM the night
    than to a bold, attractive candle Light??
    Don’t let His extravagant Brilliance be extinguished.
    You’re creative, yes?
    Then, fly-away with U.S. to the antidote…

    Whether you obtain moralityB4mortality to wiseabove
    or just glean tantalizing specimens for thy next best seller,
    you shall find in our blogs a lotta (subliminal) moxie
    which has taken this sinfull mortal yeeeeers to compile!
    I lay it ALL out for you, dear, with All-Star-Oxygems:

    Wouldn’t ya love an endless eternity
    of aplomBombs falling on thy indelible cranium?
    An XtraXcitinXpose with no zooillogical-expiration-date?
    An IQ much higher than K2?
    An anti-establishment, savvy victory +
    avant-guarde-humility =
    withe extraordinarily explosion of maelstrom mellowdramatic??
    Here’s what the exquisite, prolific GODy sed
    (with a most-excellent-detector of bull§ht):

    “Faith, hope, and love,
    the greatest of these is love –
    jump into faith…
    and you’ll VitSee with love”
    Doesn’t matter if you don’t believe (what I write);
    God believes in you.

    Meet me Upstairs, girl, where the Son never goes down
    from a super-passionate, lucrative iconoclasm where you’ll find
    nonillionsXnonillionsXnonillionsXnonillionsXnonillionsX…
    of deluxe-HTTP [<- pi] opportunities for excitement BTW.
    Do it. Do the deed, dude. Sign into the Big-Zaftig-House.

    PS “It is impossible that anyone should NOT receive all that they have believed and hoped to obtain; it gives Me great pleasure when they hope great things from Me and I will always give them more than they expect”
    -our Lord Jesus to Saint Gertrude

    …think about it, girl…
    1-outta-1 perishes in 88ish years;
    1-outta-1 shall be Divinely Judged;
    1-outta-1 goes in either direction then,
    depending how WE sinfull mortals
    have lived, is where WE go for eternity:
    Seventh-Heaven -or- the Abyss o'Misery.
    Yes, dear, life’s extremely tough now;
    yet, life’s extremely short now:
    then, WE have the length and breadth of eternity
    to consider where our decisions have placed U.S.
    And Satan’s working overtime to steal your indestructible soul.
    Don’t let that sly, smooth, sinfull Liar.
    I choose Heaven.
    Choose.

    By Blogger -blessed holy socks, the non-perishable-zealot, at 5:12 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home