Ukulele Music and Perduta Gente Format: Paperback

This double volume of poems is the first U.S. publication of one of the most important and exciting contemporary English poets. "Ukulele Music" is a narrative of violence that ranges from urban London to Patagonia, and his philosophically serious treatment of victim and witness, culture and event, is unparalleled among contemporary writers. "Perduta Gente" is an intense depiction of the pathos and ironies of urban frenzy, squalor, money, and power, complete with a variety of visual textures—newspaper clippings, handwritten notebook entries, typed memos, and a scientific table.

British poet Reading's work, available in an American edition for the first time, is rambunctious, angry, and sometimes hilarious. Here, two books are published as one. Like a ventriloquist, in Ukelele Music Reading intermittently assumes the voice of an obsequious charwoman named Viv, trying to cadge some money from her master, and at other times that of a chronicler of gruesome naval battles and mishaps. What the seemingly unrelated spheres have in common is the dire state of ``H. sap.,'' or homo sapiens, examined in gruesome detail. His obsession with the gross has led British reviewers to call Reading's humor ``too black''--a criticism ushered into his poems, along with a reply: ``What do they think they're playing at, then, these Poetry Wallahs?'' The poet proclaims that ``this is the Age Of The Greatly Bewildered Granny & Grandad, / shitlessly scared by the bad, mindless and jobless and young.'' Reading seems to relish news stories of grotesque violent crimes. Perduta Gente is a collage including press clippings and hand-written notes. The technique is less effective than Reading's amalgam elsewhere of parody and political commentary.

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