Friday, September 05, 2008

Peter Gizzi: The Outernationale

The Outernationale, Peter Gizzi (Wesleyan UP, 2007)

[40/100]

Still rife with image & sound, but sparer, more tentative than Gizzi's previous volume. Notes of love, of celebration, yes, but more notes of disquiet, even despair. The syntax halts, takes a step beyond previous simplicity, not into a heightened Prynneian complexity or a Zukofskyan indeterminacy, but into incompletion, or truism. The Watts Towers, triumphant emblems of the homegrown bricoleur – focussed in their glory on the cover of Ronald Johnson's ARK – appear on Gizzi's cover at a precarious angle, brought down to earth in their scrubby context: a pickup truck, a panel van, an electrical pole, prefab buildings.
***
And check out Rodney Koeneke's thoughtful pokes at my last Gizzi post.

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