Who's Who Vivid: Poems

by Hart, Matt

• ISBN13: 9780971821996
• ISBN10: 0971821992
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-01-05
• Publisher: Slope Editions

Summary

Who's Who Vivid is a new-jack romantic textbook - a chapter in the New Sincerity - with themes of love and loss, spun out in a language, which is by turns (recklessly) passionate, musical, and ridiculous. It's an attempt to connect the experimental muscle of the 20th Century not only with the marvelous tradition of Poetry (its aesthetic strategies and values) but also with the urgencies, emergencies and joys of RIGHT NOW this instant! As such, the book is a sort of search, both for new value in the face of postmodern valuelessness, and for a stable unified self in the funhouse of splinters-this life of images upon images upon images... It's also a re-defense of both the power of the individual (as a significant force in the face of The Vast or What Have You) and of poetry (as a naturally expressive and inventive engine for change in the world). Tonally expressive and wildly inspirited, Who's Who Vivid begins in the kitchen inventing a monster, then winds its way forward - pining, dancing, and doing the dishes - until at last, face up on the tarmac of the world, it pitches itself into the void, awaiting anyone's most marvelous reply.

Author Biography

Matt Hart is a co-founder and editor of Forklift Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Canary, Lungfull! and Ploughshares, among other journals, and can be seen online in DIAGRAM, H_NGM_N, and Octopus. A chapbook of his work, Revelated, was recently published by Hollyridge Press. Who's Who Vivid is his first book. He teaches writing and aesthetics at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

Table of Contents

Completely by Accident	9	(1)
In the Gloaming	10	(1)
The Weight of My Next Best Thing	11	(1)
Poem Where the Message Trails Off	12	(1)
How I Know I'm Still Missing	13	(1)
Criss-Cross in Every Direction	14	(1)
Why I'm Not a Robot	15	(1)
Self-Helper	16	(1)
Revolutions Per Minute	17	(1)
Elephant	18	(1)
Beautiful Burns	19	(1)
Wisherly	20	(1)
Shag Carpet Gala	21	(1)
As with Everything We Love	22	(1)
Twinge	23	(1)
In Fifteen Minutes	24	(1)
Apology Crisis	25	(1)
Who's Who Vivid in the Moonlight in Pain	26	(1)
Dada's Sawed-Off Half Brother	27	(1)
Breakable Swan	28	(1)
Letter to a Friend Who I'll Never See Again	29	(3)
I Was Dumb with Pearls, I Was Dumb	32	(2)
Great White Shark	34	(2)
Nervous Aluminum Rabbit	36	(1)
Ine	37	(1)
Big Death	38	(1)
All the Best Reasons I'm Nowhere	39	(1)
In the Sad Little Beep Beep	40	(1)
In Defiance of Gravity I Connected the Dots	41	(1)
Little Giving Noises	42	(1)
Half-Empty	43	(1)
This Is Called Pure Green	44	(1)
Calm Poem	45	(1)
My History in the Shower	46	(1)
Retirement Plan	47	(2)
Where Is Your Head in the Greatness, the Scheme?	49	(2)
I, Being Born of Skin and Undressed	51	(1)
How to Think Logically	52	(2)
Dirigible. Dog Breath. Timbuktu	54	(1)
Remodeling	55	(1)
Giant Traumatism	56	(2)
Pet Cricket	58	(1)
Now that I Have Eaten the Lord My God	59	(1)
Address to the Rhinoceros	60	(1)
What's Inside a Giraffe?	61	(3)
Song, Not from My Heart	64	(1)
Morning Collage	65	(1)
Only a Transmitter	66	(1)
Stranger in Familiar Territory	67	(1)
Face First into the Darkness	68	(1)
Confetti	69	(1)
Herein	70	(1)
In Human Resonance	71	(1)
Spring Clotting	72	(1)
Knock Knock Knock	73	(1)
Revelated	74	(1)
Hailstorm	75	(1)
At the Moment I Am Unwilling	76	(1)
The Wilder Shores of Love	77	(1)
Wildebeest	78	(1)
Throatings	79	(1)
To the People Who Know Better, Let Me Say in My Defense	80	(7)
Acknowledgements	87