Subduing Demons in America: Selected Poems 1962-2007 - Softcover

Giorno, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1593762046 ISBN 13: 9781593762049

Publisher: Soft Skull, 2008

Synopsis

Associated with key 1960s avant garde figures such as Ginsberg, Burroughs, Rauschenberg, and Johns, John Giorno was an early pioneer of multimedia poetry through Giorno Poetry Systems, which also distributed a who’s who of the American underground from Patti Smith to Sonic Youth. Giorno’s use of transgressive material and in-your-face, amplified delivery was also a key influence on punk/new wave pioneers such as Suicide, Throbbing Gristle, and Black Flag. Not just a poet but a sexual, spiritual, and political radical, Giorno helped pioneer the open celebration of queer sexuality in poetry in the 1960s. Subduing Demons in America offers the best of Giorno’s revolutionary poetry, from his striking Pop Art influenced poems of the 1960s to the psychedelic, echo-laden, multitracked cut-ups of the 1970s with their explosive configurations of queer sex, spiritual practice, and the bohemian Good Life. Also here are the pared-down punk/hip-hop performance poems that Giorno performed in the 1980s.

About this title

Review

"Giorno is a bundle of tantalizing contradictions ... Having earned his stripes in the underground, he deserves broader recognition."

"His litanies from the underworld of the mind reverberate in your head and ventriloquize your own thoughts." -- William S. Burroughs

Edition details

• Publisher: Soft Skull
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1593762046
• ISBN 13: 9781593762049
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 416
• Editor: Boon Marcus