Full Description
Listed in The Boston Globe's Best Poetry Books of 2014 Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry Winner of The Believer Poetry Award "The (Soma)tic Exercises are innovative and crucial to our art form...Conrad must be one of the most original practitioners of poetry forging new territory."--The Rumpus "There was a time some of us believed poetry and poets could save the world; CAConrad never stopped believing it."--The Huffington Post From "M.I.A. ESCALATOR": The ultrasound machine gives the parents the ability to talk to the unborn by their gender, taking the intersexed nine-month conversation away from the child. The opportunities limit us in our new world. Encourage parents to not know, encourage parents to allow anticipation on either end. Escalators are a nice ride, slowly rising and falling, writing while riding, notes for the poem, meeting new people at either end, "Excuse me, EXCUSE ME..." My escalator notes became a poem. CAConrad's ECODEVIANCE contains twenty-three new (Soma)tic writing exercises and their resulting poems, in which he pushes his political and ecological efforts even further.
These exercises, unorthodox steps in the writing process, work to break the reader and writer out of the quotidian and into a more politically and physically aware present. In performing these rituals, CAConrad looks through a sharper lens and confirms the necessity of poetry and politics. CAConrad is the author of A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon (Wave Books, 2012) and The Book of Frank (Wave Books, 2010/Chax Press, 2009), as well as several other books of poetry and essays. A 2014 Lannan Fellow, a 2013 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2011 Pew Fellow, he also conducts workshops on (Soma)tic poetry and Ecopoetics.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
M.I.A. ESCALATOR
PRETERNATURAL CONVERSATIONS
EQUINOX EVE: Silent Meeting Group
UNKNOWN DURATION OF FEAR
SUSPENSION FLUID MAGNIFICENCE
SECURITY CAMERAS AND
FLOWERS DREAMING THE
ELEVATION ALLEGIANCE
SCRYER'S INVITATION
QUARTZ CRYSTAL SHAKESPEARE
SONNET TRANSLATION
ARBOREAL CRYSTAL ARIA
FULL MOON HAWK APPLICATION
PAINTED PIGEON PROJECT
CORMORANT STAGECRAFT
9 ADZUKI THOUGHTS
TRANSLUCENT SALAMANDER
TIME TRAVEL APPLICATION
MINDING THIRST
RESTORATION FIBER SONG
HEALING FOR A PEDOPHILE
I LOVED EARTH YEARS AGO
GENDER CONTINUUM
RADAR REVERIES: Kingdom of the Coatimundi
CATHETER ENJAMBEMENT
GRAVE A HOLE AS DREAM A HOLE
