| Title | : | gowanus atropolis |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1933254815 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781933254814 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 100 |
| Publication | : | First published January 28, 2011 |
Poetry. LGBT Studies. gowanus atropolis is an ecopoetical exploration of the Gowanus canal in Brooklyn, a recently designated superfund site that was once a fertile fishing ground for the Canarsie Native American tribe. The poems grapple with reconciling the toxicity of the titular Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn and the east river in ‘Manahatta’ with the poet’s search for the pastoral in New York City. A queer elegy for when language might have been prior to thought, where the phrase becomes the thought, rather than the other way around—so that the dystopic might become, if not utopic, at least measurable / pleasurable, 'melodious offal.' gowanus atropolis reinscribes, as always already present, both queer and Native spaces in and around the Gowanus through a radical reshaping of English.
gowanus atropolis Reviews
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Aspirate all h's and brace to meet Sludgie, "erstwhal" of the Gowanus, displaced echolocator through a lush verbal wildering of neologisms, hot archaisms, and barbed portmanteaus. Brolaski finds the "herm" in "hermunculae" and puts the "gee" back in "ambigenuity." The tongue hasn't sounded this flexed and full since Chaucer lapped up Romance, but these damesirs sing instruction with their fishairs: one "ynvents a grammatical order" so to "speke englysshe/polymorphously."
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loved this book. every poem remakes English. even when silly, it feels like a fist to the jaw.
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"wel cd they speke englysshe / polymorphously"
