Synopsis
Poetry. Kit Robinson has been active as a poet, teacher, curator and performer on the San Francisco Bay Area poetry scene for 30 years. His most recent book of poems, 9:45, is a panegyric of encoded worlds which begins at the LCD readout and whirs elliptically towards the supernumerary.
"Honed, focused attention, cognitive torque and dry humor. Robinson plays off of numbers as particular instances and pivots of thought and memory. The numbers also function as nodal points of subject matter—often records of money and time as poetic opening devices—with the dimensions of life and thought opened by these particulars recombining. The numbers measure mundane given conditions and stamp them with a particular signature, and the fact of their perception—rent due in a particular apartment (first last and security) / at a certain time in life (age '29')/ the number of messages on an answering machine. These things become inseparable from the branched interconnections of poetic meaning and chains of thought through linked classes of subject matter. Elements and details are broken down, but not as fragments—not as reflections of a damaged whole immediacy— 'daily mind' —set on puree. Memories, meditations, and questions. It's impressive how much context and thought Robinson can compress into so few words."—Drew Gardner
"The obvious and subtle reality of the numerical entity is noted with both humor and insight by Kit Robinson in 9:45. In short, timed lines he shows how omnipresent is this intersection of the mysterious, abstract, yet concrete world of the 'number' with everyday life."—Joanne Kyger
"Kit Robinson's new 9:45 has arrived—American energy braked by reason in wit's clothes on 21st Century City ramp-up. Here, in the 'architecture' of clock time, commuting time, anytime, the daily metonymy points to process and revved-up consciousness-'as they say/ Almost human.' Whistling, sporty, muscular, quizzical, these poems suggest a Quixote debriefing subplots, or Zen henchman posting human zip codes, dynamite sure sentence heroics, skilled and fiercely generous."—Abigail Child
About the Author
Kit Robinson is the author of DETERMINATION (Cuneiform Press, 2010), TRAIN I RIDE (BookThug, 2009), THE MESSIANIC TREES: SELECTED POEMS, 1976-2003 (Adventures in Poetry, 2008), THE CRAVE (Atelos, 2002) and 16 other books of poetry. A co-author of THE GRAND PIANO: AN EXPERIMENT IN COLLECTIVE AUTOBIOGRAPHY, SAN FRANCISCO, 1975-1980 (Mode A, 2006-2010), Robinson lives in Berkeley, California, where he works as a freelance writer and plays Cuban tres guitar in the Latin dance band Bahia Son.
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