Description
Poems that take on all of postmodern North American poetry, commenting and enlightening the field!
Stephen Bett’s father took him to sit, age 15 and starting out in poetry, at the feet of his father’s friend P.K. Page, the doyenne of Canadian poetry, who later revived the “glosa” in Canada. Bett’s new book, his 25th, in a sense brings it all back home. BROKEN GLOSA takes the “glosa,” a Renaissance Spanish Court form, and breaks it down to its contemporary essentials―fractured forms for fractured times―riffing on postmodernist and post-avant poets in ways that are as surprising and inventive as they are richly textured. This book plays out Stephen Bett’s lifetime in North American and British avant-garde poetry, taking the measure of 67 postmodernist poets.
Poetry. Hybrid. Literary Criticism. Art. Miscellaneous.
”Stephen Bett’s new book, BROKEN GLOSA, crosses generations and poetic movements in the 20th Century and beyond, while stretching back to 15th century Spain. It breaks the changes down to their infinitesimal bits as well as macro-giant linguistic movements. It has much to teach North American and British poets about how you cover an oeuvre, ingest its primary edible, nourishing, tangible insights in one book of nova-glosas. A good-looking temptress may be best translated as Low–Leigh–Tuh, and giving evidentiary pressure on the last syllable so the viewer is brought to mesmerification. Now, read the rest of the book. There’s more.” — DC Reid
”BROKEN GLOSA is a lament, exultation, beat improvisation, pop incantation, mantric visitation, and resounding of the bardic emanation. It is a prayer, and all that seems in ruins in the world is reborn in celebration here, in the continuous song of the cosmic and eternal muse, reborn in Broken Glosa.” — Michael Rothenberg
”A Who’s Who of Cool—Stephen Bett has resurrected an old form as a way of cleverly cataloging the major practitioners of avant poetry in the past half century. He riffs on masters from an insider’s perspective, from Beats to New York School to the Zen Cowboys. Style and substance pair up perfectly in these supremely crafted, personal tributes that are themselves canon-worthy.” — Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
Author Bio
Stephen Bett is a widely and internationally published Canadian poet. His earlier work is known for its sassy, edgy, hip... caustic wit—indeed, for the askance look of the serious satirist... skewering what he calls the vapid monoculture' of our times. His more recent books have been called an incredible accomplishment for their authentic minimalist subtlety. Many are tightly sequenced book-length 'serial' poems, which allow for a rich echoing of cadence and image, building a wonderfully subtle, nuanced music. Bett follows in the avant tradition of Don Allen's New American Poets. Hence the mandate for Simon Fraser University's Contemporary Literature Collection to purchase and archive his "personal papers" for scholarly use. He is recently retired after a 31-year teaching career largely at Langara College in Vancouver, and now lives with his wife Katie in Victoria, BC.
Author City: Vancouver, BC CAN