Fugue State is John Wilkinson’s fifteenth book of poems, and the
most fiery. In it, the world is thicker than ever, crowded with all
sorts of things, from futures to the exhumed bodies of 80 girls.
His muse is a fly, try to catch it. His sentences zigzag. His
unique fashion of figuration risks cutting ties with
“verisimilitude.” Opposing everything that blocks, hardens,
locks, and pursues a single, choke-hold course, he takes his stand
on the edge of chaos, not instituted law. Thus would he champion
the precept of refreshment, not least the natural cycle of living
things. More, he curses “the misbegetting Gods [who] fuck in
beach-huts of a cement Lethe.” Data-streams, a “horizon of ones
and zeros,” self-driving cars, drones, crypto-currency, robots
– these are for him aspects of the concretization of modern
culture. Fighting its sway, he is as steely as he is mercurial.
Force is good if it’s on the side of “the vital artery.” In
the last decade Wilkinson has become a master of the longish poem
– here, for instance, ‘East Lake’ and ‘Xipe Totec.’ Of
poets now writing in English, he is the freest and most
elusive-on-principle, the most capable of pulling out a language
blade and using it. —Calvin Bedient Contrapuntal, polyphonic,
recursive and baroque, John Wilkinson’s Fugue State sounds the
dissociative disorder of our time – and of history itself. “May
my transmission glorify each wandering, singular flight,” writes
this poet; from the business traveller’s “fugue in a transport
café” to a fossilized “insect on a rock discovered in its rock
face itself rock,” Wilkinson charts fugitive flight paths through
arrest and duration, myth and modernity, art and violence,
interiority and collective life. Fugue State exposes us, like the
flayed singer Marsyas, to our own “wild skin unfolding.” From
this vital material, we might fashion a flag for lifeworlds to
come. —Srikanth Reddy
General
Imprint: |
Shearsman Books
|
Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
Release date: |
September 2023 |
Authors: |
John Wilkinson
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 6mm (L x W x T) |
Pages: |
98 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-84861-898-5 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
1-84861-898-0 |
Barcode: |
9781848618985 |
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