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Open Books: Event Archive
April 20, 2006 07:30 PM
JOSHUA CLOVER
Reading Joshua Clover's second book, The Totality for Kids ($16.95
University of California), is something akin to entering an unknown, vibrant
city. The poems feature quirkily lovely lyricism --"The stars were strange
lightbulbs, the moon was half / A spectacle, they wandered into the
vestibule / Of evening as the fat clouds / fainted away," and their own
startlingly apt logic -- "History and capital had been Astair and Rogers but
are now Clark Kent and Superman." Mr. Clover's melding of image and thought
bring some wonderful results, as in "the guillotine, an instrument / Known
as the little window. But what shall / We hope to see there? The marriage of
the beautiful / And the trivial? That the sky finally / Emptied of clouds
must now say a new thing?" The language of cities, economics, and weather
moves fugue-like through these poems. This is an unusual, dazzling book.
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