Truth is the Flaw
then there was a bell
that warned for ourses town
it’ll rung by uses idiot
mothered in ourses town
an there we had moreover was
ours bronzed an casted bell
daily rung by idiotes was
whenever townes was bad
Bird & Forest
Brent Cunningham
September 2005
Bird & Forest is clear, beautiful writing.
Laura Moriarty
Bird & Forest is divided into four sections. The first offers orations on the state of the nation ostensibly from the lips of Trillius Patronius, who may be an ancient Roman but who might also be a contemporary American poet sitting in his room in Oakland. The second section, “Bird & Forest,” is a long poem built around the single image of a bird flying through a forest. The “Animals” section largely contains poems about animals, while the final section, “The Future & Its Companions,” includes all the poems that didn’t fit in the first three sections.
About the Author
Brent Cunningham is a writer and publisher. He is the author of the poetry books Bird & Forest (UDP), Journey to the Sun (Atelos Press), and the chapbook, The Sad Songs of Hell (UDP). He helped found the SPT Poets Theatre Festival, helped coordinate the Artifact Reading Series, and is on the board of Small Press Traffic. He is the Executive Director for Small Press Distribution and founded Hooke Press with Neil Alger, a chapbook press dedicated to publishing short runs of poetry, criticism, theory, writing, and ephemera.
Praise
Ancient Roman rhetoric meets post-modern angst and continental philosophy in this ambitious, intentionally self-conscious and verbose debut. A lineated 'prelude' and closing 'reprise' notwithstanding, Cunningham arranges the volume into four sequences composed largely in clever, disorienting, poetic prose. The first, a series of 12 'orations,' shuffles urbane contemporary contents into a pastiche of Ciceronian style: 'Let's therefore speak directly and plainly, O my community," it opines. 'Would it kill me to simply say: I have never understood others, my father was in management, and it is 5:15 in the evening?' The next sequence follows a representative 'bird' through challenges and questions about the shape of history and the contradictions behind any idea of individual voice. Cunningham's searching intelligence may lead some readers to cherish this book directly and intensely; others may find it cerebral and byzantine, like an avian mind within a darkened wood.
Publishers Weekly
Bird & Forest is clear, beautiful writing. There is a simple quality of the well-told-tale to these fractured fables. This is a patient, wise, and hilarious work whose intimate tone insinuates itself into your psyche only to have its way with you and then suddenly vanish. What more could you want?
Laura Moriarity
With orations, fables, axioms, proofs, journals, and letters, Brent Cunningham offers a riposte to the confounding realities of empire just when we need it most. The repeated 'awakenings' of Bird & Forest suggest the wonder of conversion narrative without the ideological baggage. Engaging myriad rhetorical 'types,' he exhausts their function to disclose the backstory of creation, romantic love, and the curious permanence of warfare while gorgeously demonstrating the resilience of the imagination.
Peter Gizzi
Publication Details
ISBN: 978-1-933254-06-7
Trade Paperback
Perfect-bound. 104 pp, 5.5 x 7 in
Publication Date: September 01 2005
Distribution: Asterism Books (US)