Poetry. "Reading the poems in COMPULSIVE WORDS is like taking a hard drug."--Aaron Kiely "Michael Ruby's new book is experienced as a kind of sotto voce diction, an unrelenting mumbling in the back of the mind, which takes two very different forms: as a graphic representation of voices (words presented in diagrammatic patterns), and as what might be 'transcriptions' of those diagrams and patterns: 'O paper placement machines/Blue ladder to family problems' or 'Somnabulist prows to leaven/Healthy escarole.' Or perhaps the ...
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Poetry. "Reading the poems in COMPULSIVE WORDS is like taking a hard drug."--Aaron Kiely "Michael Ruby's new book is experienced as a kind of sotto voce diction, an unrelenting mumbling in the back of the mind, which takes two very different forms: as a graphic representation of voices (words presented in diagrammatic patterns), and as what might be 'transcriptions' of those diagrams and patterns: 'O paper placement machines/Blue ladder to family problems' or 'Somnabulist prows to leaven/Healthy escarole.' Or perhaps the diagrams are transcriptions of the other texts: the tense dialectic between these two poles is one of the things that makes this book well worth contemplating."--John M. Bennett On January 29, 1999, my older brother was near death in a Boston hospital after emergency surgery for a blood clot in the abdomen. As I sat near the phone in Brooklyn that morning, trying to type up an old manuscript, it suddenly occurred to me that I was experiencing an extreme emotion, dread, and that I should see which words this extreme emotion displaced in my mind. While writing the poem "Dread," I perceived certain words repeatedly appearing, forcing themselves on me, taking over the poem. From then on, during composition, I noticed the appearance of these "compulsive words," which I first collected in the poem COMPULSIVE WORDS in 2000, and whose number has continued to grow ever since. --Michael Ruby
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Add this copy of Compulsive Words to cart. $6.10, very good condition, Sold by Midtown Scholar Bookstore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Harrisburg, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2010 by BlazeVOX [books].
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