Poetry. CETERIS PARIBUS is a phrase commonly used by economists and means "assuming all other things are held constant." With this phrase, a host of unintended results can be explained away as having been caused by changes in the real world, and the model itself is sustained. As the economy collapses around their ears, the bewildered theorists of the dismal science may claim that were CETERIS PARIBUS only possible, the predicted outcome would have obediently presented itself. In Gale Nelson's poetry, language misbehaves much like the economy. The multiplicity of factors at play on the page—and among pages—keeps the poem from settling anywhere near constancy. Each time order seems just around the corner, variances begin to seep in—and anything becomes possible.

Author City: PAWTUCKET, RI USA

Born in Los Angeles, Gale Nelson has lived in Providence since the 1980s. He has taught at Trinity Repertory Conservatory and Brown University, where he is Assistant Director of the Department of Literary Arts. Gale Nelson is the author of THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TALK ENDS, CERTERIS PARIBUS, and STARE DECISIS as well as of a number of chapbooks. He is represented in the anthology 49+1: Nouveaux Poètes Américains, and two of this plays, "Disciplining the Dimes" and "The Undiapered Filefish," are included in The Joy of Phonetics and Accents by Louis Colaianni. He is also the editor of paradigm press.