Bruce Andrews; Give Em Enough Rope

Series No.: SM Andrews

ISBN: 978-0940650732, Pages: 186

American Literature, Poetry

A Sun & Moon title.

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Comments on Bruce Andrews’ Wobbling (his previous book of poetry):

“Wobbling has the sheer clarity of a mid-career master in full engagement with the issues of the world—and with a very specific message.” — Sagetrieb

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One of the most controversial writers of our time, Bruce Andrews has positioned himself at the most radical end of contemporary American poetry. Like the Russian Futurists in the first decades of this century, Andrews argues against “the Tradition” as it has been reified by Modern poets and contemporary realists, and in its place he has posited new directions for poetry, wherein the poem is less an object than it is an active statement of being in the world, a “shorthand” of experience at the edge of being made into the real through language. He is one of the key figures associated with the Language poets (or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, after the magazine that bears that name).

The six long works of Give Em Enough Rope—“I Guess I Work the Time Up,” “Unit Costs,” “Give Em Enough Rope,” “Swaps Ego,” “True Flip To,” and “Confidence Trick”—are artful records of Andrews’ mind and ear as he ponders political and social conditions and as he listens to the language of the street, where every day meaning is made out of the horror and delight of living.