N/O

by Silliman, Ron

• ISBN13: 9780937804568
• ISBN10: 0937804568
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-01-01
• Publisher: Roof Books

Summary

Poetry. N/O is a book-length poem in two parts that marks the nineteenth publication from Ron Silliman, a prolific American writer, critic and organizer of localized issues. Described as a "poem of moments," N/O expresses a poetic methodology that has brevity and wit on its side. At the same time, Silliman, who was once a leader of the Language poets, tips his hat to the tradition of the extended poem. N/O itself is considered to be two sections of Silliman's longer project, The Alphabet, which itself contributes to a life-long work called Ketjak. In N/O, the poet "rants, records, juxtaposes, declares, riffs, puns [and] pans" in expression of "his hunger and will to live and absorb" --Tom Beckett. Silliman, "a political poet par excellence," has written a book whose "pleasures.are resonant for the time they take to taste" --Samuel R. Delany.

Author Biography

Ron Silliman has written and edited forty books of poetry, critical theory, and memoir, most recently The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Letters: Selected 1970s Correspondence of Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, and Ron Silliman. His work has been translated into sixteen languages. Silliman’ s anthology In the American Tree is the definitive gathering of language writing. His own poetry is included in The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Poems for the Millennium, Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology, and Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing. Among his awards, Silliman received the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation in 2010, a Pew Fellowship, grants from the California and Pennsylvania Arts Councils, and two literary fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.