i never knew what time it was - Softcover

Antin, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520243056 ISBN 13: 9780520243057

Publisher: University of California Press, 2005

Synopsis

In this series of intricately related texts, internationally known poet, critic, and performance artist David Antin explores the experience of time―how it's felt, remembered, and recounted. These free-form talk pieces―sometimes called talk poems or simply talks―began as improvisations at museums, universities, and poetry centers where Antin was invited to come and think out loud. Serious and playful, they move rapidly from keen analysis to powerful storytelling to passages of pure comedy, as they range kaleidoscopically across Antin's experiences: in the New York City of his childhood and youth, the Eastern Europe of family and friends, and the New York and Southern California of his art and literary career. The author's analysis and abrasive comedy have been described as a mix of Lenny Bruce and Ludwig Wittgenstein, his commitment to verbal invention and narrative as a fusion of Mark Twain and Gertrude Stein. Taken together, these pieces provide a rich oral history of and critical context for the evolution of the California art scene from the 1960s onward.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

"The poems in this volume are unforgettable. Richly funny, elegiac, philosophical, contentious, filled with astonishing stories and bizarre characters―some of the finest writing by today's most compelling poet."―Gerald Bruns, author of The Material of Poetry: Sketches for a Philosophical Poetics

"These talk poems bring the reader face to face with a great mind. I could hardly bring myself to put the book down."―Hannah Higgins, author of Fluxus Experience

"Just keep talking, like they say, and with luck and genius maybe you'll get to be like extraordinary David Antin. Not only was he there, wherever―which is a very large place indeed―but he can tell you just what happened. I must believe it's all in knowing how to listen."―Robert Creeley, author of If I Were Writing This

"For thirty years now, David Antin has been producing fascinating meditations that he calls ‘talk poems.’ Beginning in actual talk, they take their textual form from strenuous thinking about a given set of puzzles or problems, tackling "ideas" via narrative networks, as poignant and profound as they are hilarious. The situations are always taken from everyday life, but the mode is one of intense defamiliarization. In these, the most recent of his ruminations on time, space and human fallibility, Antin shows himself, once again, to be our truest philosopher-poet."―Marjorie Perloff, author of Wittgenstein’s Ladder

"David Antin has been one of our savviest cultural critics for over four decades. In i never knew what time it was Antin takes us on a voyage through his mind. Get on board for a lively and insightful trip."―Irving Sandler, art critic, historian, and author of A Sweeper-Up After Artists: A Memoir

From the Back Cover:

"The poems in this volume are unforgettable. Richly funny, elegiac, philosophical, contentious, filled with astonishing stories and bizarre characters--some of the finest writing by today's most compelling poet."--Gerald Bruns, author of "The Material of Poetry: Sketches for a Philosophical Poetics"These talk poems bring the reader face to face with a great mind. I could hardly bring myself to put the book down."--Hannah Higgins, author of "Fluxus Experience

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0520243056
• ISBN 13: 9780520243057
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 186