Still Dirty: Poems 2009-2015 - Softcover

Lau, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1934639184 ISBN 13: 9781934639184

Publisher: Commune Editions, 2016

Synopsis

Born of a rigorous criticism of the toxicity of the economic system, this collection of experimental, socially conscious poetry reflects a world in crisis. It mobilizes scenes of struggle and instances of solidarity, from Occupy to Mexico's drug war, from Cairo to Athens. Linguistically daring, full of exigency, these poems are as damaged as life, still dirty.
David Lau has been involved in the poetry, art, and activist communities of Los Angeles and the Bay Area for the past decade. A lecturer at UC Santa Cruz, he is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and editor of the journal Lana Turner. This is his second book.

About this title

About the Author:

David Lau has been involved in the poetry, art, and activist communities of Los Angeles and the Bay Area for the past decade. His new work is of a piece with his commitments to these varied but interconnected communities. A lecturer at UC Santa Cruz, he is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Review:

Praise for Still Dirty:

"These poems are products of a global crisis and united in revealing how humans have failed one another with social systems built around oppression, dominion, and submission.... Lau’s poems are not a single mirror being held up to the reader, but an entire hall of mirrors that one must walk through to experience all of imperialism’s terrifying angles." ―Publishers Weekly

"Lau's poetics of damaged life cooks with an eerie flame." ―Michael Robbins, Chicago Tribune "Best Poetry Books of 2016"

"These poems demand to be reread and galvanize our attention about as much as present reality requires the same; which is to say, absolutely." ―Adam Fitzgerald, Literary Hub

"The new news in these poems comes from those experimental moments when social contradictions show through as two sides of what’s going on.... This is not just a window on what’s happening but a raising of the wind as well." ―T.C. Marshall, Galatea Resurrects

"The 53 poems in this collection accomplish the rare feat of critiquing 21st-century economics, poking fun at popular culture and singing poetically all at the same time.... Still Dirty is experimental, socially conscious and extremely contemporary. Read it at your own risk." ―Mike Sonksen, Entropy

"Lau’s poems take place at the periphery of consciousness; try to look directly at them, try to explain what they are saying, and they blink away. These are poems that exist in a fun house of connotation, poems that are simultaneously creative and destructive." ― Dominic Luxford, The Believer

"Even as capitalist culture's reality-screens are flickering and frying out, David Lau's poems offer image-captures of something they can't contain. Lau's poetic mixology surges and beats with the rhythms of resistance, creating vortexts that serve as maps of future victories, verbal harbingers of a utopia dirty enough to come." ― Andrew Joron, author of Trance Archives

"David Lau’s sizzling new collection confronts the key lyric dilemma of the first quintile of the 21st century: namely, how get the lyric out of its delirious position on the cross of personal rabbit hole (vertical) and a-political theoretical equivocation (horizontal) while still, as he puts it, “straight not giving a f-- - about normativity.” Radical and playful until one wonders which is which, part imagined and part documented to the same effect, Lau mobilizes a lyric insurrection via a trans-continental vernacular. ”  ― Ed Pavlic, author of Let's Let That Are Not Yet



Praise for Still Dirty:

"These poems are products of a global crisis and united in revealing how humans have failed one another with social systems built around oppression, dominion, and submission. Lau’s poems are not a single mirror being held up to the reader, but an entire hall of mirrors that one must walk through to experience all of imperialism’s terrifying angles." Publishers Weekly

"Lau's poetics of damaged life cooks with an eerie flame." Michael Robbins, Chicago Tribune "Best Poetry Books of 2016"

"These poems demand to be reread and galvanize our attention about as much as present reality requires the same; which is to say, absolutely." Adam Fitzgerald, Literary Hub

"The new news in these poems comes from those experimental moments when social contradictions show through as two sides of what’s going on. This is not just a window on what’s happening but a raising of the wind as well." T.C. Marshall, Galatea Resurrects

"The 53 poems in this collection accomplish the rare feat of critiquing 21st-century economics, poking fun at popular culture and singing poetically all at the same time. Still Dirty is experimental, socially conscious and extremely contemporary. Read it at your own risk." Mike Sonksen, Entropy

"Lau’s poems take place at the periphery of consciousness; try to look directly at them, try to explain what they are saying, and they blink away. These are poems that exist in a fun house of connotation, poems that are simultaneously creative and destructive."   Dominic Luxford, The Believer

"Even as capitalist culture's reality-screens are flickering and frying out, David Lau's poems offer image-captures of something they can't contain. Lau's poetic mixology surges and beats with the rhythms of resistance, creating vortexts that serve as maps of future victories, verbal harbingers of a utopia dirty enough to come." Andrew Joron, author of Trance Archives

"David Lau’s sizzling new collection confronts the key lyric dilemma of the first quintile of the 21st century: namely, how get the lyric out of its delirious position on the cross of personal rabbit hole (vertical) and a-political theoretical equivocation (horizontal) while still, as he puts it, straight not giving a f-- - about normativity.” Radical and playful until one wonders which is which, part imagined and part documented to the same effect, Lau mobilizes a lyric insurrection via a trans-continental vernacular. ”   Ed Pavlic, author of Let's Let That Are Not Yet

About this edition

• Publisher: Commune Editions
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1934639184
• ISBN 13: 9781934639184
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96