Bribery

Steven Zultanski

POETRY  |  $16 $14.40

December 2014
Read an excerpt

Your crimes are already there. You’ve already committed them. You’ve already
repented. You’ve already been forgiven and then done it again, whatever it is that you’ve
done. Only when you begin committing all the crimes in the world

does it seem like no one is offering them to you; later it seems like each one is merely
another present to unwrap—and not even the kind of present that makes your heart beat
faster for having received it, a present from an estranged lover who may or may not be
giving you something as a sort of revenge, say, but more like

a present dropped in your office mailbox by your boss, which turns out to be a gift
certificate to a restaurant owned by the company you work for.

A video nasty, and a note on the anxiety-riddled tenderness between individuals (and strangers) in a country (world, space, atmosphere) overwrought with information sickness.

Ed Steck, Fanzine

Bribery is a long poem in which the narrator confesses to unsolved crimes in New York City, rants about politics, and lives for thousands of years. Incorporating elements from a range of genres—including noir, horror, and science fiction—the text gleefully digresses on a variety of subjects, from the mechanics of economic coercion to the production of individual guilt to the tense pleasures of domesticity. A meandering narrative in the form of a rhapsodic poem, Bribery careens toward an ambiguously tender, sci-fi conclusion.

About the Author

Steven Zultanski is the author of several books of poetry, most recently On the Literary Means of Representing the Powerful as Powerless (Information as Material), Honestly (Book*hug) and Bribery (UDP). His essay on Alice Notley’s use of voice is part of UDP’s 2020 Pamphlet Series. His critical writing has appeared in Art in America, Frieze, Kunstkritikk, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Mousse, and elsewhere. He lives in Copenhagen.

Praise

Strangely comforting…

Marie Buck, Prelude

A video nasty, and a note on the anxiety-riddled tenderness between individuals (and strangers) in a country (world, space, atmosphere) overwrought with information sickness.

Ed Steck, Fanzine

Publication Details

ISBN: 978-1-937027-30-8
Trade Paperback
Perfect-bound. 112 pp, 5.1875 x 8 in
Publication Date: December 01 2014
Distribution: Asterism Books (US), Coach House Books via Publishers Group Canada (Canada), Inpress Books (UK)