Spot the Terrorist! - Softcover

Jakiela, Lori

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1936370697 ISBN 13: 9781936370696

Publisher: Turning Point Books, 2012

Synopsis

Lori Jakiela's Spot the Terrorist! takes the reader on flights through the ordinary, in which the mundane experiences of an airline attendant become something much stranger and wilder.

About this title

From the Author

Excerpt from an interview with Lori Jakiela on "How a Poem Happens," by Brian Brodeur:

Q: Do you have any particular audience in mind when you write, an ideal reader?

LJ: I hope I write for a very broad audience. I'd like as many people as possible to read my work. I'd love people who don't read poetry or who say they don't understand or like poetry to be able to read my poems and maybe connect with them in some way. In Pittsburgh, one of our daily newspapers runs poems every Saturday. In my neighborhood, when something in the paper is particularly moving or funny or sad, people cut it out and stick it on their refrigerators. So that's what I want to be: the kind of writer who'd make it to somebody's fridge.

Q: Do you consciously employ any principles of technique?

LJ: The writers I love most - West Coast poets like Gerald Locklin, Joan Jobe Smith, Charles Bukowski; East Coasters like Ed Ochester, Ed Field, Dave Newman -- are so direct. Their language is plain. It looks simple. Easy. And I can't think of anything more difficult. Is pursuit of clarity technique? Maybe. I hope so. I want to make sense. I want to be clear and say something true about the world, my world. I recently saw a statement from an editor who said "I am certainly not advocating a return to know-nothing plainspeak." Since when does plainspeak equal know-nothing? I'm not talking about dangerously folksy politicians here. I'm talking about art. I think it's very scary to be direct and clear - in a poem, in prose, in life -- because people will be able to see you. Really see you. It's very vulnerable, being seen. But I'm not much interested in playing around with language for the sake of playing around. I'm not interested in toying with readers. I'm with Kurt Vonnegut on this: pity the readers. I have very little patience with pyrotechnics. We all have so little time.

From the Back Cover

Cover art/painting -- "Stranger in a Strange Land" -- by Pittsburgh-based artist Lou Ickes

About this edition

• Publisher: Turning Point Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1936370697
• ISBN 13: 9781936370696
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 90