Escape Velocity

by Breskin, David

• ISBN13: 9781932360455
• ISBN10: 193236045X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-10-19
• Publisher: Soft Skull

Summary

A polyrhythmic and polyphonic "tour-de-force" that engages both with the constructed and the constructor--with buildings and architects, with music and musicians, policy and politics, the personal and the political, the dancer and the dance.

Attacking his subject matter with fierce precision, confronting the world on the same tough terms as an investigative journalist would, David Breskin traverses the globe in search of the conjunctions and elisions that reveal the world. His poems go into all the darkened interstitial spaces, and crack them and lever them wide apart: scary, open, free. "Welfare Reform" is about just that, as a monologue spoken from one very poor to one very rich, referencing North Korea, African tribal warfare, the holocaust, mortgages, ecstasy, Native Americans, tennis and dancing along the way; "Ugly Beauty" takes a Monk song title and goes at contemporary Social Darwinism by way of Cheney, Bush, "The Bell Curve" controversy, and Cindy Crawford's mole; "Newsworthy" looks at how our society commodifies "tragedy" to bolster the emotions of innocent spectators (with a special snippet reserved for Plath's ex-); and "Due Process" examines a schoolyard shooting from the POV of a mother who's lost her only child.

Author Biography

David Breskin first made his name in the 1980s and early ’90s as a freelance journalist, writing for national magazines, most prominently, Rolling Stone, where he was a contributing editor. After publishing a novel, The Real Life Diary of a Boomtown Girl, Breskin turned away from journalism and toward poetry, and by the mid-1990s had begun publishing poems in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Parnassus, New American Writing, and TriQuarterly, among other periodicals. His first book of poetry, Fresh Kills, was published in 1997, and his second, Escape Velocity, in 2004. His next work, Supermodel was a one-sentence epic poem, or novel-in-verse.

Breskin has also worked as a record producer for the past thirty-five years and, in addition to Frisell and Cline, has collaborated with leading-edge musicians beginning with John Zorn, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Vernon Reid, and Joey Baron in the ’80s and early ’90s, and continuing with Mary Halvorson, Kris Davis, Craig Taborn, and Chris Lightcap in the current decade. He lives in San Francisco. Most of his work may be found at davidbreskin.com.

Table of Contents

Prelude
The Guitarist	p. 3
Jumping Over Your Shadow Slash Landscape With Squeege	p. 5
Growing	p. 8
Evidence
Escape Velocity	p. 11
Welfare Reform	p. 13
Ugly Beauty	p. 15
Newsworthy	p. 16
Due Process	p. 17
Mosaic Wipe	p. 19
Just Asking	p. 23
State of Affairs of State	p. 24
Diplomatic Relations	p. 26
Broken Country Scramble	p. 27
Independence Day: Plaza de Armas, Cusco	p. 29
Revolutionary Politics	p. 31
Rated X	p. 32
Leh Over in Kashmir: Alchemy of Travel	p. 34
Freedom Of / Freedom To	p. 35
Hush-Harbor (The Old South)	p. 36
Battle Hymn of the Republic, 1860-2004	p. 37
Pirates	p. 38
Spiel	p. 40
Edge City	p. 42
Transformations	p. 44
Today's Plane Crash	p. 45
Waffles	p. 46
Failures	p. 47
Well, You Needn't
Capsized	p. 51
Her, For Instance	p. 53
The Jug Shop	p. 54
Waiting For the Light: 10:48 Saturday Night	p. 55
Angel Food	p. 56
Alcatraz	p. 57
Way Back in the Vanguard	p. 58
Void Where Prohibited	p. 59
Love Letters	p. 61
Decisions	p. 62
Sorry I Misunderstood You	p. 63
The Grandmother Poem	p. 65
Skylark	p. 67
Guilty	p. 68
Woman Trapped By Screaming Children	p. 70
X Packs a Day	p. 72
San Francisco To San Diego	p. 73
Invitation to Move West	p. 75
An Atmosphere of Isabel	p. 76
My Prosthetic Everest	p. 78
Belief Systems	p. 80
Counting	p. 81
Swimming Lesson	p. 82
Work	p. 83
Man, in the Middle of the Ocean, With Piano	p. 84
For Daisy, On Her 13th Birthday	p. 85
Proclivity	p. 86
Rhythm-A-Ning
Literary Fiction	p. 91
Millennial Curve: A Torqued Ellipse or Three	p. 94
Industrial Facades	p. 96
Days	p. 99
Blank	p. 100
S, M, L, XL	p. 102
The Architecture of Implosion	p. 104
My Favorite Things	p. 107
Rusty Cage	p. 109
Package / Packaging	p. 112
If Books Were Like Paintings	p. 114
Relevancy	p. 117
Double Blind	p. 119
Coda
Confluence Camp	p. 123
Seeing and Believing	p. 124
Verbatim: My Airport Taxi Driver, While Waiting For a Tow Truck, Takes a Stand on the Republicans	p. 126
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