Poetry. This book begins at both ends--instead of having a traditional front and back, it has two front covers, and can be read in either direction, suggesting that the post-structural theory that informs much of this book's content was taken to the level of its physical construction as well. The poems, essays, and aphorisms inside draw on the work of deconstructionists and feminist theorists to critique the relation of language to gender and cultural hegemony. MÊMEWARS is a book writing against itself. Imagine a language constructed of a breath scattering Adolph Hitler, Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous into the inarticulate breathlessness of the arctic page.

Author City: JAMAICA, NY USA

Adeena Karasick is a poet, media-artist and the award-winning author of seven books of poetry and poetic theory: Amuse Bouche: Tasty Treats for the Mouth (Talonbooks 2009), The House That Hijack Built (Talonbooks, 2004), THE ARUGULA FUGUES (Zasterle Press, 2001), Dyssemia Sleaze (Talonbooks, Spring 2000), Genrecide (Talonbooks, 1996), MÊMEWARS (Talonbooks, 1994), and THE EMPRESS HAS NO CLOSURE (Talonbooks, 1992). Marked with an urban, Jewish, feminist aesthetic that continually challenges normative modes of meaning production, and engaged with the art of combination and turbulence of thought, her work is a testament to the creative and regenerative power of language and its infinite possibilities for pushing meaning to the limits of its semantic boundaries. Karasick has lectured and performed worldwide and regularly publishes articles, reviews and dialogues on contemporary poetry, poetics and cultural/semiotic theory. She is Professor of Global Literature at St. John's University in New York.

Reviews and Other Links
author site