Old poems in new clothes, new poems with a familiar accent ...
Long-time readers of the the rich, densely-constructed poetry of Boruk Glasgow will welcome this definitive collection of his New and Selected Poems. Jazzy in rhythm, Beat in spirit, yet versed in high art and a lifetime of serious reading, Boruk, like Whitman, has let his poems accumulate facts, details, historical and political allusions over decades. His ball-of-string poems, some started in the 1970s and widely read on the New York poetry scene, have undergone revisions to make them as apt as ever – and perhaps some of us have read and learned enough now to see better what some of these poems were getting at even back then. Norman Mailer said of this mercurial poet, “Boruk works with the full spectrum of modern poetry, to wit, he works on levels of incantation, and also he demands of poetry that step that modern poetry has certainly taken since Pound, that it be intoxicating.”
Boruk himself writes with great clarity about his poetics:
Layers upon layers of symbolic code and reading between the lines pervades the communicative arts. … What is unsaid … is often pregnant with meaning and can speak volumes. … Gaps between stanzas or leaps in juxtaposed thoughts and images have the same effect [as silences]. … Abracadabra Taps’ subliminal infusions … informing my own signature Solid State compounding – readers, start your engines, down-shift, up-shift, let the games begin. I do enjoy rubbing disparate verbal essences together, hoping to generate sparks. … If I’m lucky, a new kind of fire in the mind results.
This chunky 260-page book will reward the reader who comes back again and again for the random read and surprise. A book this rich works as rhapsodomancy: the right poem will find you when you are ready for it. We are happy to greet and feature this fine poet, a number of whose early books were published by The Poet’s Press during our Manhattan years.
CLICK HERE TO READ SELECTIONS FROM THIS BOOK (PDF)
