Edward Dorn was tasked by his teacher Olsons obsession with his teacher Pounds Cantos to write a poem containing history, which he subverted by humor ("Entrapment is this societys sole activity only laughter can blow it to rags."). Gunslinger, the historical poem containing humor Dorn invented, may be the closest predecessor to boink! Dealing cards at Slingers table, Dick Martin proposes "Television is the olive in the martini of chain reaction," a line Dorn would have traded on. By comparison, the emergent distraction of funny cowboy poems is merely another noisy fight down the bar. Martins brand of humor, like the late masters, is determinedly social. Only the clinically mad tell jokes to themselves, and even then Artaud kept on writing for the stage. As neurotically selfabsorbed as boink!s speaker is, Dick Martin is paradoxically one of our unblinking social criticsand part of the power of his book derives from his relentless reestimations of his fate as a plastic cardcarrying member of the popular culture it has taken a century for late capitalism to manifest. from Rich Blevins review of boink! (see Appendix A) Richard Martins Marks does a remarkable thing it makes metaphysical absurdities sound as conversational as a good joke. What looks like a surrealist writing his will and sounds like an irrepressible standup comedian is actually, fresh, green, recognizably original poetry. Guy Davenport, author of The death of Picasso I had great fun reading Richard Martins...

Binding: Paperback;592 pages; Publisher: Spuyten Duyvil; Classification: N/A; Weight: 1475.79 g; Dimensions: N/A

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