Anthony McCann seeks out the elusive Other with all the raucous self-loathing of a mad saint. Eroticized, debunked, adored, and despised, the sayer of these incantations ventures with appropriate fearfulness into the known, buoyed only by the persistence of the body in its current manifestation. His penetrating, pervasive doubt lends a perverse clarity to the journey.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Anthony McCann's Father of Noise, his first book, is terrific: an intelligent, surreal, original bulletin from contemporary America, its landscape, its violent history, its wild humor, its experience of and secret longing for disaster. 'I need to pretend/ that I am under attack from the air,' concludes the paranoid, deranged, yet still-lucid speaker of 'Skywalker Ranch.' The poem 'Empire State' (invoking New York state, for those unfamiliar with its official nickname) brings us efficiently, sparely, 'Further north into/Deepest Indian Country.' Strange metamorphoses happen in these poems, transformative flares of consciousness: 'Beneath my dead skin/My true skin was burning.' The often deadpan tone and occasionally bizarre dramatis personae--'In the Kitchen I am called Snowflake' begins the poem 'Valium'--never obscure McCann's acute diagnosis of where we live now, our 'American Experience,' as the title of one poem has it. McCann is a mordant environmentalist, alive to the pressure of noise on our psyches, materialism on our resources, egotism on our ecology. 'We are all engaged in this lugubrious parody of pleasure/ because we/are Phony Balonies. (I am looking/for a real commitment),' he writes in 'Walk and Missive.' Below the fun and sudden violence, one hears a strange, keening prophecy: 'We will say things to each other when we meet/in the skyway, in the future. . . . /[Because we are tender/and electronically sensitized' ('My People'). Poet and critic Charles Bernstein has said poetry should be at least as interesting as TV. McCann is up to that challenge."--Maureen N. McLane , The Chicago Tribune
From the Publisher
6 x 8" trim.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A most engaging Report From the Surface!,
By The Wordy Bird "Robin" (An Undisclosed Basement in Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Father of Noise (Paperback)
I first ran across McCann's poetry some 7 or 8 years ago when I saw a few pieces of his published in the poetry journal "Fine Madness." Immediately I was struck by the singularity of his voice, the very human off-kilteredness, the fierce, aware intelligence and the vulnerability ("I am ranting / or I am groveling," reads one snippet, and in another: "I am feeling handsome and genocidal. / 'What kills bugs dead!' I holler. / Here in the hardware store / I am feeling tall and vigorous. / Walking home, / my poison in my bucket. / I lied. In reality my tummy hurts / which makes me small / and red. And I never leave the house."). If you like your poetry served with a dash of - or, in this book's case - a healthy, home-cooked portion of quirkiness (including not only citing the strange ["Do you have a raygun / or perhaps a stick of commemorative gum? I need to pretend / that I am under attack from the air."], but making the common ridiculous ["I am reading Newsweek / in the world"]), then don your too-tight starfleet uniform and prepare to be transported...
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A little gem,
By ruth-anne menezes (California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Father of Noise (Paperback)
I came across this little gem of poetry quite by chance. Very fresh yet very accessible. And beautifully produced.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
