Customer Reviews

Exquisite Corpse Annual #1

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From India to Hungary to Dubai to Egypt to the forgotten leper village of Carville, Louisiana and the flooded city of New Orleans, reading this collection is like going on a journey, picking up bits of lives and cultures along the way. There's a good selection of work in translation by writers that may not be familiar to most readers-- Arlene Zide's introduction and translation of four Hindi poets, the translations of Attila Jozsef's Hungarian verse as well as Nicolas Born's German poems. Garry Craig Powell and Dawn-Michelle Baude both give perspectives on the lives of expatriates. The end of the collection returns to the States with Megan Burns' "Carville, Louisiana: Village of Forgotten Names" and Andrei Codrescu's photographs of post-Katrina refrigerator art in New Orleans.

This is a great collection. There's something for every mood: poetry, essays, fiction, a short play, all beautifully written; there's even an excerpt from a zombie story by Robin Becker. It's a great way to find writers you'll love but have never heard of. Check out the often overlooked Willie Smith in "Resurrected Manhunt" for a crazy trip. The essays in the collection confront key issues of our time from a discussion of the nature and limitations of anthologies by Jerome Rothenberg to Kane Faucher on the economic possibilities of Facebook. Overall, it's a very playful collection that defies expectations by being extremely readable.

The poetry and fiction in this annual is original, creative, and, above all, moving. It shows you what language can be and should be. You get a good selection of work from each author, so you get a real feel for their style. The poetry has a presence it isn't just shoved in between essays and fiction. It is substantial. The first selections in the book are poems from Diane di Prima, and the loveliness of the language begs that it be read aloud. Her experimentation with words and form is remarkable and is excellent preparation for the rest of the work in the book, which includes work by Bill Berkson, Alice Notley, Dave Brinks, and a poetic collaboration by Ruxandra Cesereanu and Andrei Codrescu.