Brief Capital of Disturbances

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Omnidawn, 2003 - Poetry - 94 pages
Inspired initially by the journals of Roland Barthes (and by the cahier tradition in general), George Albon uses the sentence and short paragraph as subtly syncopated listening devices, sounding for meticulously intimate and often surprisingly revelatory details of the daily encounters that comprise urban living. Relative to the prose poem and the journal entry, these passages pass through such distinctions as true amphibians--breathing a new vigor into whatever medium one might place them. With such formal fluidity, Albon's sentences shift the fulcrum between language and experience, subtly tempering the resistance so as to move, with his exacting articulations, beyond the exactingly referential. Faithful to the intuitive surprise and shock of each moment's aliveness, and attuned to experience as a kind of wordless address, Albon repeatedly enlarges the parameters of what language can encompass and communicate.

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About the author (2003)

GEORGE ALBON's books include Empire Life (Littoral Books, 1998) and Thousands Count Out Loud (lyric&, 2000). His essay "The Paradise of Meaning" was the George Oppen Memorial Lecture for 2002. He is also a guitarist and songwriter, and has written articles on modern music for Shuffle Boil magazine. He lives in San Francisco and has worked at Green Apple Books on Clement Street as a used book buyer for about 12 years.

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