Description
Poetry. Drama. Art. Music. "It has often been said that Marcel Duchamp gave up art for chess. Geoffrey Gatza has reversed the process, and produced a sumptuous 'souvenir program' of a performance of Stravinsky's ballet Apollo, framed by an elaborately-plotted chess game between Duchamp and his female alter-ego, Rose Selavy. The results are stunning."—John Ashbery
"With APOLLO, Geoffrey Gatza has created a unique Surrealist romp with assemblages (both visual and myriad-genre) of various tropes and delights: mythology, ballet, chess, tableau, theatre, documentation, image, memoir, sound. Amazing! This is a tremendously ambitious weave, truly a meditation on various slices of belletristic-artistic power that have shaped his (and our) ethos and consciousness in ways that come alive here with determination and grace. 'The word smithereens does not exist in the singular.' He pulls the fragments together, as they perform and re-enfold with a deeply performative flare. Bravo."—Anne Waldman
"I've played many games of chess but none like this. Modernist art plays its gambit. As we journey through the game the ways of seeing multiply. Win or lose, it's a wild ride. The fetish of board, pieces, hands... players. Listen and learn. Let Geoffrey Gatza's textuality lift you out of your 'addled tranquility.' Pas de deux with one of Duchamp's 'madmen of a certain quality', watch the choreography of the corps de ballet unfold. Pause for the deeply humane and human interstices in passages of real tenderness and poignancy. Herein is the new surrealism. Entrez!"—John Kinsella
Author Bio
Geoffrey Gatza is an award winning poet and editor. He is the author of many books of poetry, including APOLLO (BlazeVOX, 2014), SECRETS OF MY PRISON HOUSE (BlazeVOX, 2010), Kenmore: Poem Unlimited (Casa Menendez, 2009), BLACK DIAMOND GOLDEN BOY TAKES BULL BY HORNS (BlazeVOX, 2008), and HouseCat Kung Fu: Strange Poems for Wild Children (Meritage Press, 2008). He is also the author of the yearly Thanksgiving Menu-Poem Series, a book length poetic tribute for prominent poets, now in it's tenth year. His visual art poems have been displayed in the gallery shows OCCUPY THE WALLS: A Poster Show, AC Gallery (NYC), 2011, and LANGUAGE TO COVER A WALL: Visual Poetry through its changing media, UB ART GALLERY (Buffalo, NY), 2011-12. Geoffrey Gatza is the editor and Publisher of the small press BlazeVOX. The fundamental mission of BlazeVOX is to disseminate poetry, through print and digital media, both within academic spheres and to society at large. He lives in Kenmore, NY with his girlfriend and two beloved cats.
Author City: BUFFALO, NY USA