Poetry. All too aware of language's inability to reveal real answers or to calm the cold and hard world we inhabit, in JARGON Brian Clements nonetheless revels in the places where we settle into "language's sly do-overs," into meaning—communication, identity, the making of art, religion and its replacements, each other—hoping to emerge from the dark places of the universe (e quindi uscimmo) to see again sunlight. The prose poems in JARGON are haunted by the ghosts of form, rhetoric, narrative, argument—the cultural forms that make the world familiar yet tend to abandon us when we need them most (such as in times of war, or in times of economic collapse). Like its prequel, AND HOW TO END IT (Quale Press, 2009), this book seems to rise ab nihilo in search of a beginning and an end—a cause and a purpose.

Author City: DANBURY, CT USA

Brian Clements is the author of several collections of poetry, including DISAPPOINTED PSALMS, AND HOW TO END IT, Essays Against Ruin, and JARGON. Clements is also editor of the independent, non-profit press Firewheel Editions. He is Professor of Writing, Linguistics, and Creative Process at Western Connecticut State University and Coordinator of WestConn's MFA in Professional Writing.

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