Supermodel

by Breskin, David

• ISBN13: 9781933368429
• ISBN10: 193336842X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-10-12
• Publisher: Soft Skull

Summary

Epic poems need epic heroes--divine, fantastic creatures, whose larger than life exploits project the spirit of an age--and now David Breskin has bequeathed our celebrity-obsessed era its very own form-fitting Supermodel.

Loosely inspired by the story of tsunami survivor Petra Nemcova, the heroine of Supermodel is an outsized force of nature: fiercely competitive, intellectually curious, emotionally wounded, resolutely moral, and of course, ravishingly attractive--a globe-trotting innocent who exudes sexuality in every way . . . except the most obvious. As she literally clings to life, her story is revealed in a series of flashbacks which wing us from Middle East to Wild West, desert to tropics, country to city--all vividly described, in potent couplets, as paradises found and lost.

Breskin peppers this dark comedy with unsettling wordplay, shrewd social commentary, and a reporter's acute eye for the facts of life: his virtuosic writing matches the breathless pace and rich complexity of his heroine's travails. But even as Breskin relates his supermodel's tale, his story is matched by strangely salient scrolls of "found poetry" culled from web sites. This new feat of literary dovetailing creates a sublime surprise: the first epic poem of the Internet Age.

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.