hi everybody (and sorry for cross-posting with SUNY list), new book of poems by me. actually, my first 'trade' book: If Language (BookThug 2005). 56 perfect anagrams strung along a bead of possible languages. not available in bookstores yet, excepting the publisher at bookthug.ca if you follow the bookthug links, you will end up at this rather inelegant url: http://www.bookthug.ca/miva/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=BookThug&Product_Code=1026&Category_Code=AA here's the hype thus far: If Language was a short-listed finalist for Rhode Island's Spineless Books Fitzpatrick O’Dinn Award for constraint based writing in 2004. and blurbs: ‘If language can be nihilistic in its wit, if language can be simplistic in its fun – then this book truly uncovers all the ‘abracadabras’ hidden deep a million ages ago within even the most unmagical of all grammatical limitations... Even the most philistine critics admit that this feat appears impossible -- still its delights persist.’ – Christian Bök. 'If Language is not only a unique way of telling but a unique way of listening, as delicate as it is obsessive. Betts disassembles each word gently, with a sensitive and tender ear, listening to the sound of a single paragraph, to the space in it that is both occupied and unoccupied, for ommissions and possibilities... While authorship and voice, even meaning and form itself, are uncertain in If Language, these 56 discrete but intimately connected children are entirely original, and entirely essential.' - JC Bellringer. ISBN 0-9737181-6-1; 107pp; perfectbound. a few examples below.... over and out, gregory betts -- "Literature is news that stays news." -- Ezra Pound -- "Everything is screwed up. Wrap yourself in black. Listen to the Cure." -- Better than Ezra 27. He scans the headlines of the morning newspaper for anagrams. He can’t accept their topology and flips back to a more inhibited reading. His pen in hand crosses out all subtle words, adds letters and re-punctuates every telling. With scissors he inserts deletions, insisting all the while it is no violent act, but for his frank type of truth. He turns to the television, forgets the objectivity of [if] language inhibited by its lush sensuality of images. A magical, illogical lump of cartoon authorizes artificiality. He laughs at comic falls, gaming up to logic with implicit affirmation. His climactic sublime disappears, a lunch coffee fouled. 28. A basement leak, the rodents bristle, insects surge compass wire, old men thru puddles passing cautious candle-like glisten. Refractory tho incantatory pass thru puddles difficult hallway, Lascaullion etchings shift in motion cave history, filthier gloom. Threatening to catch bare moon divide the finer flames and sanctuary as that of hell. Strange bohemian figures wait among ochre outlines, signal the whole chamber music in doubting plea. Fighting its fiery feet, guide gazer: it is written violence; it is for poems. Fifty ill felines echo utopia, pout in photoic jails, as if this flash against biblical caves spoilt philosophic tact. 33. The night is video deposits, what we mine of callous clowns in the july concretion. Sibilance embraces the skittish imposition of august. You curtsy Canada’s sallow cities, find an ineffable geologic. Flags fallow, a populace postures to right thoughtless child-thief; enough to appeal a sigh. This flimsily pulsating passion, faithful cities tremble in their transom, mightily uplifted. A delicate maze floods the mechanical, arboreal fluids: a soft pastiche. Here thinking its past is total, static. In another convergence, if empirical bodies harm cultures, vagrants or tilt virgin understanding: the fine layer, the merry dance of ribbons.
begin:vcard fn:Gregory Betts n:Betts;Gregory org:University of Toronto at Mississauga;The Department of English and Drama adr;dom:3359 Mississauga Rd N.;;UTM North Building Rm 294A;Mississauga;ON;L5L 1C6 email;internet:[EMAIL PROTECTED] tel;work:(905) 828-3734 version:2.1 end:vcard
