Hallelujah Blackout
by
Alex Lemon
Book Details
Format
Paperback / Softback
ISBN-10
1571314318
ISBN-13
9781571314314
Publisher
Milkweed Editions
Imprint
Milkweed Editions
Country of Manufacture
GB
Country of Publication
GB
Publication Date
Mar 27th, 2008
Print length
168 Pages
Weight
226 grams
Product Classification:
Poetry
Ksh 2,000.00
Re-Printing
0 in stock
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Quality
Fast
Alex Lemon’s work defies categorization. Stark juxtaposition of images evokes the New York School, verbal collages suggest the associative method of the postmodernists, and his playful attention to sound recalls elements of Language School poetry. While these elements surface in Lemon’s work, his poetry remains profoundly original, his voice remarkably distinct. Lemon is also, like Frank O’Hara, an autobiographical poet, using the materials of life for inspiration. At 29, he is already a survivor of brain surgery. Still coping with the surgery’s effects, including a gradual loss of vision, he invokes, proclaims, decries, and serenades the world that results after the violation of identity. When the membranes that divide mind and body rupture, the result is not a void, but a strange sensory landscape where all stimuli exist on the same level. Avoiding the easy temptations of both despair and consolation, Hallelujah Blackout embraces the full range of the human experience.
“Astonishing . . . A pure-gospel shout to the vaulted heavens.” —D. A. POWELLWritten in the aftermath of brain trauma, this astonishing collection takes us through a glittering underworld of illness and recovery, on a confrontational, explosive trip that is at once euphoric and brutal. Through the painful process of rehabilitation and the lingering effects of illness, including a gradual loss of vision, Alex Lemon undergoes a forced metamorphosis that shatters the divide between pain and joy. These poems invoke, proclaim, decry, and serenade the world that results after the violation of identity. From the taste of blood to a glimpse into the opening heavens, the hallucinatory poems of Hallelujah Blackout are an expedition of self made foreign: when the membranes that divide mind and body rupture and the space between them is made, visible, radiant, alien. It is a rapturous reclamation of the body and a mournful ode to what has been lost. Without relying on familiar narratives of despair and pity, this collection serves as a tender hymn to the decay, crimes, and promise of human life.
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