Brevity's Rarely Prized

in poetry and never in politics (the campaign sound byte may be an economical use of words, but the true cost of its taxes haunts the future). One reason I love Tom Beckett's Vanishing Points of Resemblance is its brevity. It shows -- as does Silliman's Tjanting, Hejinian's My Life, Jono Schneider's "... But I Could Not Speak...", Stephen Rodefer's Four Lectures, most of Grenier's work -- that a complex work can be built up from simple units, words, sentences and paragraphs (Silliman, even in his sprawling metropolis The Alphabet is a kind of minimalist, each new sentence a poem unto itself), smaller units accruing, accumulating, procreating into a whole larger than its parts..

I prize work that conveys the momentous in the moment, that in a flash floods my physical and intellectual senses, that foregrounds the singular over the massive plural, all of which can be found in the works mentioned above in a Geoff Huth's anthology of "pwoermds:"

&2: an/thology of pwoermds Released

From Geoff Huth's announcement:

Assuming the world is finally ready for it, I recently completed the first-ever anthology of pwoermds, &2: an/thology of pwoermds. (For any of you not yet familiar with pwoermds, you need a copy of this book of one-word poems.)

Written, edited and designed by Geof Huth, this small (but almost 100-page)perfectbound booklet includes everything the lover of pwoermds would ever need:

An essay on pwoermds that discusses their history, public reaction to the most famous of pwoermds (Aram Saroyan’s lighght), the art of the pwoermd, and the tentative status of pwoermds with regard to copyright.

A detailed bibliography with sources for and commentary on hundreds of pwoermds covering the entire 40-year history of pwoermdmaking.

Scores and scores of pwoermds in a wide variety of styles by an eclectic collection of poets: mIEKAL aND, paloin biloid, Jonathan Brannen, John Byrum, John Robert Colombo, endwar, Greg Evason, B. J. Fiorellino, Christopher Franke, LeRoy Gorman, Bob Grumman, Lee Gurga, Michael Helsem, Crag Hill, G. Huth, Jim Kacian, Karl Kempton, Richard Kostelanetz, Mark Lamoureux, Peggy Willis Lyles, Ezra Mark, John Marron, Marlene Mountain, bpNichol, annie one, Emily Romano, Aram Saroyan, Strawberry Saroyan, Surllama, George Swede, Cor van den Heuvel, Nicholas A. Virgilio, Michael Dylan Welch, and Karl Young.

This essential anthology usually costs $10 postpaid. But anyone mentioning this blog announcement can purchase this book for the low price of $6 postpaid. For more information, contact The Runaway Spoon Press, 1708 Hayworth Road, Port Charlotte, FL 33952; or email Bob Grumman, the publisher.

Tell all your friends. Get in on the ground floor of this major cultural event.