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"You've been thinking to yourself that it all feels very American." Ed Pavlic's tireless, resourceful speaker is American, of indeterminate race, implicated at every conceivable point of entry into the struggles that go on "here," which is everywhere, the Inferno of the title: "if an //analogy affects an enemy then let's let // inferno the enemy inferno the enemy."
In a "Daybook" of paper stapled together by George Oppen circa 1964, he wrote:
There is the area of Lyric—the
area in which one is absolutely
convinced that one's emotions
are an insight into reality
and death
But values—as they say—
—at a Dominican picnic, one summer back when there were only four of us, we sat on a blanket watching the band. Stacey gets up and walks away and a woman sitting with her kids and four—maybe?—sisters turns to me smiling and asks me a question in Spanish. The other women turn to look at me. I say I don't understand. She : your wife, she speaks es-Spaneesh? Me : no, not really. And she : Is she Dominican? And me : no, she's black. The women bounce looks off each other and back to me. Kids oblivious. She : jou mean black black? Me : yes, blackblack—
' the dark colour was so dark. . . '
Ed Pavlic is associate professor of English and director of the MFA/PhD program in creative writing at the University of Georgia.
Pavlic (Who Can Afford to Improvise?), two-time winner of the National Poetry Series Open Competition, blends memoir and lyric in this genre-bending collection, fearlessly exploring the personal and political boundaries of race, history, and heritage. —Publishers Weekly Starred Review
Let’s Let That Are Not Yet: Inferno arrives right on time while managing, in its depth and breadth, to be timeless, presenting an indelible example of what poetry might look and sound like when it strives to engage critically with our contemporary world. Reverberating with a lyric form and flow grounded in the backbeats of hip hop, jazz’s improvisatory play and r&b’s soulful truth-telling, and fully conversant with multiple traditions—from Shakespeare through (Po-)PoMO and popular culture—these poems put the political back in poetics and poetry back in the news. —National Poetry Series Judge John Keene
DIALECTICS OF LIBERATION ACCORDING
TO CARLEEN ANDERSON 5
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VERBATIM : BREAKING NEWS : MARCH 25, 2011 7
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CURVE 27
CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY 29
THIRSTLOVE 30
SUMMERTIME OR SOMEWHERE JUST (SOUTH OF) ABOVE
MY HEAD 33
BECAUSE TRANE WOULD HAVE BEEN 87 TODAY 38
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RENDITION OF A PYRRHONIST 49
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VERBATIM PALESTINE : WITHIN HUMAN SIGHT OF A LIVING LIFE : JUNE, 2014 59
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COULD YOU EXPLAIN WHAT YOU MEAN
WHEN YOU SAY DIAGONAL ? 78
TEXT MESSAGE : FROM MILAN PAVLIC 4:33 PM FRIDAY
APRIL 12, 2013 SENT DURING A GOLF TOURNAMENT PLAYED
ANNUALLY AT AUGUSTA NATIONAL GOLF CLUB 80
WITH WORM FOR WORM THE BIRD :
A COSMOLOGICAL FILIBUSTER 81
ODE TO THE CONFEDERATE LIVING: MARCH 30, 2014 87
NOOK AND BOON (OF ROCK & HARD PLACES) :
“CONTEMPLATION” 88
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CROSS-CURRENTS : AFTER LATER POEMS 94
PHONEME DEATH 105
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VERBATIM : ROUTES 107
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