Hallelujah Blackout

by Lemon, Alex

• ISBN13: 9781571314314
• ISBN10: 1571314318
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-02-12
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Underlife	p. 3
Sing	p. 7
Flourishing	p. 9
Rocksteady	p. 10
So soon	p. 12
Operculum	p. 13
Praxis	p. 15
And no more may I be	p. 16
Requiem	p. 18
Modern man's hustle	p. 20
When you don't know if it's really the good stuff	p. 22
Chronocentrism	p. 23
Boxboard	p. 25
Roundworm	p. 26
Homebound	p. 28
The night Diego Maradona tried	p. 30
Yet I ride the little horse	p. 31
Boomerang	p. 33
It's always late where you are	p. 34
Abracadaver	p. 35
Up all night	p. 57
All we inherit	p. 59
Souvenirs from the unraveling	p. 61
Rally rally rally	p. 63
Good times	p. 65
Spotless	p. 67
Elevator music	p. 69
Orgazo MoMo	p. 71
Dourine	p. 73
Better cleaning with voodoo	p. 75
Sizzler	p. 77
The lights go on the lights go off	p. 79
Something wicked this way comes	p. 81
Bedbugs	p. 82
Interview with a ghost	p. 83
I love cake	p. 85
Hallelujah blackout	p. 87
Patter to mend	p. 115
In this best of all possible worlds	p. 117
The meat grinder	p. 118
Plication	p. 119
Wildfires	p. 121
Asthma attack	p. 122
It's hard to tell who will love you the best	p. 124
Resurrection	p. 126
Fuck all this merrymaking	p. 128
My pet chicken	p. 130
Drilling tiny holes in my head	p. 131
Everything	p. 133
The way it is	p. 134
Etiology	p. 136
Up	p. 137
Chevere	p. 139
Sawing tinfoil	p. 141
Skin on skin off skin on skin off	p. 143
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.