Poetry
Memnoir
By Joan Retallack
Memnoir is a high-speed chase through intersections of chance and consciousness in the "experience of experiencing" our lives. Movies and memory swap visceral/ visual thrills with mathematics and philosophy as Retallack plays with our reliance on symbols and cultural frames of reference to get 'to the point' of a given moment.
Joan Retallack's marvelous Memnoir is so much more than what one can say about it. The unforgettable words she offers look back on 'one of those periods when life seems superficially friendly' or is this the 'hot majestic interlude' of a film version of the same?
—John Ashbery
Reconfiguring the geometry of attention, Retallack's Memnoir opens to a present in which "coming out of the movie theater the world is bright gnomic present tense tensile everything happening at once..."
—Leslie Scalapino
Joan Retallack has almost single handedly convinced us that the avant garde is still the avant garde. Her own work is always distinctive for its unpredictable pleasures. In Memnoir she turns our attention to the unpredictable patterns of memory. A stunning poem.
—Julianna Spahr
Joan Retallack is the author of such critical works as The Poethical Wager (2003) and MUSICAGE: John Cage in Conversation with Joan Retallack (1996), which won an America Award in Belles-Lettres. Her previous books of poetry include How to Do Things With Words (1998), AFTERRIMAGES (1995), and Errate 5uite (1994), which won the Columbia Book Award. She teaches at Bard College, serving as Director of Language and Thinking, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Humanities, and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Writing and Thinking.
2004 50 pages $10.00 ISBN 978-0-942996-54-8
