As much a work of conceptual art, docudrama, theoretical investigation and political critique as it is a book of poetry, PW
editor Scharf's third collection uses Freytag's pyramid of dramatic analysis (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and denouement) as the framework for his five-part exploration of the sociopolitical climate circa 2002 to 2003. The five sections take multiple forms: a short play; a list of years that hover menacingly above the names of corresponding countries; a 20-page list, in alphabetical order, of corporations, organizations, nations, acronyms, and individuals; short verse poems (“you have to have/ a place to physically put the past/ to move it”); an extended essay (“Since it's predicated on finitude, capitalism couldn't work if people didn't die”); and responses to a sign held outside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that attempted to call attention to the role of imperialism in the acquisition of art (“I'm in a bourgeois panic and have no response”). This is not a book concerned with the sublime, expressive subjectivity or even the making of beautiful poems, but a tour de force coupling of humor and terror, an expansive and necessary indictment of the pervasive encroachment of narcissistic rock-stardom into all realms of American culture, and an argument for “[p]oetry as a struggle/ for psychological liberty.” (May)
