Some Mantic Daemons - Softcover

Kalleberg, Garrett

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0971680000 ISBN 13: 9780971680005

Publisher: Futurepoem Books, 2002

Synopsis

Poetry. This is the first offering from Futurepoem Books, a new publishing collaborative dedicated to presenting innovative works of contemporary poetry and prose. "A prophetic ferocity joins visceral appetite in Garrett Kalleberg's powerful new collection; spirit and matter couple to spawn a ravishing anxiety, a beautiful disaster...For thosewho wish to go where poetry is rendered as a limitless limit, fretted withknowings and unknowings and their generative inquisitions. Once again, thelife of the mind finds its avatar"—Ann Lauterbach.

About this title

About the Author:

Garrett Kalleberg's previous volumes of poetry include SOME MANTIC DAEMONS (Futurepoem, 2002), Psychological Corporations (Spuyten Duyvil, 2002), and Limbic Odes (Heart Hammer, 1997). His poetry, reviews, and translations have appeared in various journals, including Brooklyn Rail, The Canary, CROWD, ELEVEN ELEVEN, Damn the Caesars, Tragaluz (Mexico), FENCE, Sulfur, FIRST INTENSITY, DENVER QUARTERLY, A.BACUS , AUFGABE, Mandorla, and American Letters & Commentary, and in AN ANTHOLOGY OF NEW (AMERICAN) POETS (Talisman House, 1998). Garrett's theatrical work "The Situation Room" was produced by Brooklyn Drama Club for Collective Unconscious, New York, 2002, and The Fringe Festival, New York, 2003. From 1998 to 2002, Garrett edited The Transcendental Friend and the Immanent Audio label. His awards for poetry and critical writing include a grant from Poets & Writers, two awards from the Academy of American Poets, and two grants from The Fund for Poetry. Garrett holds a BFA from Cooper Union, and an MA in Creative Writing from City College.

From Publishers Weekly:

Conjuring a state of being in which outer and inner blur and reverse, these "daemons" examine the body as an abstractable form and treat mental powers like a set of abs: "I made a room/ out of a book and I wrote a book/ about the room." In 20 poems over four sections, Kalleberg (Psychological Corporations) calls down all manner of ancient gods and invokes a host of difficulties (and the history of ideas that fails to contain them) "until `the author's guilt' on a Post-It note/ loses its glue." In "Beautiful Disaster," an incantatory, swirling list of apocalyptic tortures gives way to sunbeams, the taste of sea foam in the mouth-and permutes into the pain of breakup. Throughout, Kalleberg uses archaism ("I shan't say"), wry repetition ("languish/ in the languishing languish/ squish in the squishing shit") and apostrophe ("Come back!/ Come in! come in, do you read me?") to construct a "Theatre of tricks" in which mock-scientific experiments are performed on a helpless subjectivity: "I'd cut/ through artifice, tell you what I know,/ but once I made a pact to/ wear it like a skin/ like the skin of an anatomized cadaver/ anatomizing another cadaver." Taken alongside previous titles and Kalleberg's work as editor of Web journal The Transcendental Friend, this book makes an argument for aesthetic pleasure as being just as "real" as any other experience, one that takes forms that are more desirable than others, even if they lead one astray: "A daemon is called, gives up, and another/ emerges, gives his life for a cause/ and hence his sins forgiven and a place." The deeply orphic implorings of these semantic demons will convince many readers to finish the book along with the apple, if not to forgive their excesses.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Futurepoem Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0971680000
• ISBN 13: 9780971680005
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 70