Empire Burlesque| click here to read excerpts from the book | leave / read comments and critiques of the book |
Empire Burlesque
“It’s pure pleasure to read a book that erupts from such a clear, inspired
vision. Mark Svenvold’s Empire Burlesque is the most original, ambitious
book of poems I’ve read in years—it rolls over you like a giant wave. You never
know who’s going to show up in these poems, or where they’re going next, but in
the end, it all seems perfect, inevitable.” —Jim Daniels, author of
Blue
Jesus, and Revolt of the Crash-Test Dummies
“A late 20th century landscape, Empire Burlesque moves over our particular continent, landing in a few chosen districts of time and geography, each poem a record of surroundings, of dictions, of many marvelous details that parallel the odysseys of the human heart. Svenvold’s love of language and wonderful ear for history make for a wild music.”—Sophie Cabot Black, author of The Descent: Poems and The Misunderstanding of Nature: Poems
Empire Burlesque begins with a romp through the Journals of Lewis and Clark and ends with cameo appearances by Ambrose Bierce, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound (in drag), Andy Warhol, and even King Kong. Mark Svenvold was inspired to this approach, which he describes as that of a “clown lost in the Library of Babel,” by the letters of Jules Laforgue, who believed clowns had achieved true wisdom. With this collection the author shares Ezra Poundian–inflected poems that are funny, that are as serious as they come, and that realign the personal with the historical.
Mark Svenvold’s poetry has been published widely in Ploughshares, The
Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, The Iowa Review, The Journal, and Swink.
He is winner of a Discovery/The Nation poetry prize; and his first
collection of poems, Soul Data, won the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry,
selected by Heather McHugh. His nonfiction books are Big Weather: Chasing
Tornadoes in the Heart of America (Henry Holt and Company, 2005) and Elmer
McCurdy: The Misadventures in Life and Afterlife of an American Outlaw (Basic
Books, 2002). He has written for Best Life and Harper’s and is currently working
on an article for The New York Times Magazine about North America’s first
solar-hydrogen residence. He lives and works in New York City.
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Nov 2007 Poetry 68 pp. 6x9 |
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| $13.95 paper 978-0-8142-5166-9 (0-8142-5166-8) | Add paper to shopping cart |
| $9.95 CD 978-0-8142-9155-9 (0-8142-9155-4) | Add CD to shopping cart |
| The Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award in Poetry |
