What Language for Prophets and/or Loss Format: Trade Paperback

Jerome McGann’ s work is a pataparodic reflection on William Blake’ s visionary Menippean satire The Marriage and Heaven and Hell, where Blake skewered the thought and practice of his period’ s secular and sacred Enlightenments. Having grown a public address more blind and indigent than even Blake imagined, contemporary regimes of our Modernity are here called to an outrageous comic accounting staged as a set of relentless language games and prosepoetic Nonsense. A gallery of arresting never-neverland illuminations by the artist Arthur Kennickell, nearly all -- but, significantly, not all -- created specifically for this work, open fresh doors of perception into what Blake’ s and McGann’ s works set out to do. What Language for Prophets and/or Loss is a more synoptic act of “ transubstantiation” than the selections that appeared last year in McGann’ s Transubstantiations, also published by Station Hill Press.

Arthur B. Kennickell is an artist toiling and rejoicing in the land of his creatures, though he is known in other places as a scientific observer of human behavior. William Blake was one of the early influences in his work. More of his creatures are available for e-viewing at www.arthurbkennickell.com. Jerome McGann’ s literary work is a broadly scaled practical study of how creative media, particularly poetry and the book arts, shape culture and society. He often writes verse and poetry as part of these investigations. The work of William Blake has been a lifelong focus of attention.