Poetry. Translated from the French by Gian Lombardo. In THIRD BODY, Michel Delville continues in the tradition of Belgian prose poetry exemplified by such prose poets as Henri Michaux, Geo Norge, and Eugene Savitzkaya. These writers honorably and admirably extend the francophone tradition of the prose poem as started in nineteenth century France by Aloysius Bertrand and Charles Baudelaire. Delville utilizes the prose poem as a way to access profound poetic sentiments and provide trenchant social commentary through prosaic means--"To convert our ideas into material things." This conversion requires an understanding not simply of the material conditions Delville wishes to elucidate but also the ways in which political shifts play out on an intimate human scale, and vice versa. Throughout Third Body, Delville's lush, fervent prose poems masterfully articulate his philosophical concerns, while demonstrating a profound pleasure in using this literary form to express them. He is our interpreter, our navigator, our scribe across the terrain he sets out, and we need him here to guide us. We need literature like Delville's to help us make sense of human events because, on its own, "The eye doesn't see beyond sky."
Author Hometown: Liege BEL
About the author: Michel Delville is a writer and musician born in Liege, Belgium. He is the author of The American Prose Poem; J.G. Ballard; Hamlet & Co (with Pierre Michel); Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and the Secret History of Maximalism (with Andrew Norris); Food, Poetry, and the Art of Consumption: Eating the Avant-Garde, and many other essays pertaining to comparative poetics and interdisciplinary studies. He teaches literature at the University of Liege, where he directs the Interdisciplinary Center for Applied Poetics. His awards as a writer and essayist include the SAMLA Book Award, the Choice Outstanding Book Award, the Leon Guerin Prize and the 2001 Alumni Award of the Belgian American Educational Foundation. As a musician, he has recorded and toured extensively with various bands such as The Wrong Object and Alex Maguire Sextet, as well as high-profile jazz and rock musicians including Elton Dean, Harry Beckett, Annie Whitehead and Ed Mann. He was recently signed to the New York-based label Moonjune Records (www.moonjune.com).
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