Uselysses

Noel Black

POETRY  |  $15 $13

November 2011
Read an excerpt

from “At the End of the World”

You hardly ever hear about gophers in poems these days

as they stand above their dark holes

& scout about anxiously for their families beneath the marquee of the Gopher-Plex,

waiting to see the new documentary about a misanthropic gopher who has traveled to Antarctica

to show us both the pathos & the beauty in the absurd clash of gopher culture, science & nature on the world’s most inhospitable continent.

It was a good movie, though flawed, & left me wishing it had been distilled into a more perfect beauty, though where would the truth in that be?

Which is how I feel about this poem

about a misanthropic man who has traveled to New York City to show us both the pathos & beauty in the absurd clash of family, time & death in the world’s most inhospitable city

before he looks away from the bright, incomprehensible world

& returns to his dark hole.

flings one into a state of complete exultation

Kevin Killian

Noel Black’s Uselysses contains five discrete books of poems written over the last four years. Some of these are poems of experience. Others are night raids or open attacks on the reserves of meaning that, we’re almost convinced, derive from properly appreciated experience; meanings we back on faith so we can keep having meaningful experiences in the future. As a radical questioner of such faiths, Black subjects his own skepticism to sufficient pressure to line a mine with prodigal kindness or absolute contempt, depending on the company. Most vital to the reader, his voice is clear throughout, natural, and the poems are fun to read over again. A peerless comic poet, Black’s poems have appeared widely, but few of the poems in this book have been published anywhere until now.

Uselysses is Noel Black’s first full-length book of poetry.

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About the Author

Noel Black lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, artist Marina Eckler, and their son Ursen. Co-founder with Ed Berrigan of LOG Magazine and publisher of Angry Dog Midget Editions in the late 1990s, he has since worked as a writer and producer for a wide variety of media outlets including The Stranger and WNYC. He currently works as a producer for KRCC public radio. He is the author of half-a-dozen chapbooks including Hulktrans (Owl Press) and In The City of Word People (Blue Press, 2008).

Praise

Black declares, in an almost off-handed way, that poetry can’t do anything important. He is demonstrating self-conscious awareness of the limitations of the written word, or catering to some requirement for realism, or accepting the freedom of effort without responsibility.

Josh Cook, The Rumpus

The poet is like Carl Sagan come back to life, unzipping his burnt-orange windbreaker, shooting lasers of love out from the spectral Starfleet logo upon his heart, zapping us all into a rapture of wordless knowledge as God folds our souls into a dream.

Adam DeGraff, Big Bridge

Black is looking poetry in the eye, with the stern gaze of a playful practitioner. I’ve always felt that the art needed more joshing around to contend with, but not necessarily obliterate, the high holiness. Uselysses argues for a wider aperture in poetry’s lens, rejoining poetic competency with the impulse that drew us all to the form to begin with. He makes a compelling, intelligent, crass, hilarious, and engaging case through example.

Levi Rubeck, BOMBLOG

If he had written only the astonishing long poem, 'Prophecies for the Past,' that concludes his book, Noel Black would have a huge heap of laurels to rest on, for it is the sort of reading experience they must have invented poetry for—it flings one into a state of complete exultation. But Uselysses offers more than mere perfection. It is a Rube Goldberg contraption of highs and lows, pains and pleasures, built by a man committed to family and experiment in equal measure. Like Goldberg, Black knows how to disguise the real with the gloss of the zany, and his energy could push this riverboat up the side of a cliff. 'Sometimes I feel genuinely happy,' he writes, and you will too.

Kevin Killian

I love Noel Black's poems. They are fragrant and strong. Also there's the basic thing—he's just got an interesting mind.

Eileen Myles

In the News

Links

Other UDP titles from Noel Black here

Reading “Prophecies for the Past” at St Mark’s Poetry Project

Publication Details

ISBN: 978-1-933254-89-0
Trade Paperback
Perfect-bound. 120 pp, 6 x 9 in
Publication Date: November 15 2011
Distribution: SPD