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Poem: Wooly Bully
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Terese Svoboda reads
from Weapons Grade
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Weapons
Grade
Poems by Terese Svoboda
Poems that walk out to the edge
where language is made
“Svoboda has such range—of subject, of emotion
(from whimsical play to chillingly dead serious)—that
these poems take you on a wild ride, fast and dangerous, but
always in control. This is a goddamn terrific book!”
—Thomas Lux, author of God Particles
"Weapons Grade is both whistleblower and elegy,
a tour de force in the expansive in-your-face tradition of
Susan Griffin and Garry Trudeau. Svoboda is an indefatigably
American writer of conscience and acuity--a documentarian
and saboteur, satirist and sharp-tongued citizen, her poems
dangerous and heartbreaking. "Forget the rockets'/red
glare you so dearly love/and tear down that bright banner
blood./We can't be moths attracted by light/we must...chew
at the fuse." Svoboda does, indeed, chew the fuse--inexorably,
lyrically, heroically."
—Maureen Seaton, author of Venus Examines Her Breast
“'Let the continent flex its bicep,/ a man built on
steroids.' This is Terese Svoboda's grave view of America
today, in her new collection Weapons Grade (the name
of a grisly atrocity game), but she makes poems that laugh
anyway! Here are awful blanks: “utility/ ... not useful
to them really,/ being dead already”; “I can't
read the papers, or/ your face on the phone.” Here are
goofball diction and mad rhymes: “You/ will be furry
and sleepy/ after I clear the clearing bête noir/ nette
bois/ fête René Char.” Here is a zany typo:
“Man walks into a bra.” Note this perfect domestic
sketch: “her shoes are tied but.” (We never learn
but what?!) Sweet- or sharp- tempered comedy empowers Svoboda
to address the direst subjects in a prophetic and scary book
full of hilarious noises.
—Caroline Knox, author of Quaker Guns
In her
poetry Terese Svoboda walks out to the edge where language
is made and destroyed. Her subject is human suffering. Called
“disturbing, edgy and provocative” by Book
Magazine, her work is often the surreal poetry of a nightmare
yet is written with such wit, verve, and passion that she
can address the direst subjects.
Weapons Grade is a collection of poems about the
power of occupation—political and personal. They often
play with sestina, sonnet, and couplets, as if only form can
contain the fury of between the occupier and the occupied.
There's a pervading sense of dread, of expiation, of portents—even
in potato salad. There's also elegy and lullaby and seduction
but, in the words of the sixties tune "Wooly Bully,"
the reader must "Watch it now, watch it." Highly
poised, grand and intensely lyrical, the poems veer from the
political to the personal, then finish on the elegiac, releasing
complex and unexpected meaning with emotional precision. Looking
directly into the contemporary apocalyptic, Weapons Grade,
Svoboda’s fifth collection of poetry, draws readers
back to the radiant present.
Terese Svoboda is the author of ten books
of prose and poetry, most recently Black Glasses Like
Clark Kent that won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. Her
honors in poetry include the Iowa Poetry Prize and two prizes
from the Poetry Society of America, the Lucille Medwick Award,
and Cecil Hemley Award. She has also won an O. Henry Prize
for the short story, the Bobst Prize for fiction, a Pushcart
Prize for an essay, and a National Endowment for the Humanities
fellowship in translation. Her opera WET premiered
at Los Angeles Disney Hall in 2005.
Svoboda lives in New York City.
September
5 1/2 x 8 1/2, 136 pages
$16.00 paper
ISBN 978-1-55728-906-3 | 1-55728-906-9
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