Poetry. HOMAGE TO THE LAST AVANT-GARDE contains a wide variety of poems and prose, representing all strands of Johnson's work: versions from the Greek, traduced to an extraordinary degree; anti-war poems, overflowing with rage; stink-bombs tossed in the direction of some famous poets, mostly meant in an ironic, joshing way. But not all. And then there are memoir poems of persons met and places visited, that may well be documentary in nature, or may also be artfully disguised. Memory is, after all, an awkward thing, and not to be trusted, just as politicians and their henchmen are not and there is no irony in their treatment in this book. No, sir, none at all. "Best known for the Araki Yasusada incident, Kent Johnson is a deadly serious, brilliant subversive. His brand of fiction is derived from the fabulist Borges, Michaux, and magic realism, but with a slightly nasty edge. 'I am in awe of you,' I emailed him recently and meant it ..."--Linh Dinh.

Author City: Freeport, IL USA

Kent Johnson grew up in Uruguay and worked during the 1980s as a literacy teacher in rural regions of Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution. He is author, editor, or translator of twenty-some books and chapbooks, including three collections of poetry recently published abroad in translation. Translated into a dozen languages and appearing in more than twenty countries, his work has been selected for awards from Pushcart, the Illinois Arts Council, PEN, and The National Endowment for the Arts. In 2004, he was named State Teacher of the Year by the Illinois Community College Board. He lives in Freeport, Illinois.