You Don't Know What You Don't Know (Cleveland State University Poetry Center New Poetry) - Softcover

Bradley, John

4.73 out of 5 stars

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9781880834909: You Don't Know What You Don't Know (Cleveland State University Poetry Center New Poetry)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1880834901 ISBN 13: 9781880834909

Publisher: Cleveland State U Poetry Center, 2010

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Poetry. Winner of the 2009 Cleveland State University Poetry Center Open Competition. A collection of prose poems that might be described as Franz Kafka and Frida Kahlo going out for a date at Coney Island. The book reflects what happens when you drop an American history textbook, an issue of People, and a short history of dreams into a blender.

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About the Author

John Bradley is the author of Love-In-Idleness: The Poetry of Roberto Zingarello (Word Works), Terrestrial Music (Curbstone), and War on Words (BlazeVOX). He edited Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age (Coffee House Press), a poetry anthology, Learning to Glow: A Nuclear Reader (University of Arizona Press), and EATING THE PURE LIGHT: HOMAGE TO THOMAS McGRATH (Backwaters Press). He teaches at Northern Illinois University and lives in Dekalb, Illinois, with his wife, Jana, and their cats, Kiki and Zuzu.

Review

Reading John Bradley is like holding a flashlight and staring into the abyss. His poetic vision is, by turns, terrifying, humorous, and illuminating. Each poem conveys something of the psyche of contemporary life, the texture of our own peculiar madness, where the senseless seems normal, and logic but a figment of one's imagination. In this new collection, Bradley clearly establishes himself as one of the premier prose poets in our country today. --Nin Andrews

John Bradley's You Don't Know What You Don't Know reinvigorates parables, legends, and lists to both familiarize and destabilize sacred and secular histories. By turns surreal and humorous, chilling and strange, Bradley's work engages pop culture and politics, making a rare and intelligent music. Bradley's linguistic prowess will have you reading these poems aloud at parties. --Denise Duhamel

"I once dated a woman who had a miniscule role (she bit the head off a marigold) in a movie that was never released but gained cult status mostly because it was never released." Thus speaks a narrator in John Bradley's You Don't Know What You Don't Know, who gives hints at the shenanigans we might expect like another narrator (or is it the same guy?) who lives in a sealed cave with Madonna, who, unfortunately has no interest in sex. In the hands of a lesser poet, these scenarios would be merely amusing, but by now Bradley has become a master of creating modern parables that take on the superficiality and narcissism of our personal and public lives. No one escapes his scrutiny. And for us, that s a good thing. --Peter Johnson

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