In the Time of Assignments
by Douglas A. Martin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Douglas A. MartinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-01-28
ISBN: 0979663601
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Book Reviews of In the Time of Assignments
Book Review: House of Cards
Summary: 5 Stars
I know Douglas Martin mostly through his prose writing, and among his many achievements are the two New Narrative masterworks OUTLINE OF MY LOVER and the collection THEY CHANGE THE SUBJECT. Now here comes a bumper crop of poems, I mean really a big old book! In it Martin exchanges the extraordinary concision of his prose style--so crisp, so lapidary--for a discursive, generous, even eccentric verse line. I guess there are two Doug Martins, that's what. Brandon Stosuy's blurb hails this style as "ëxpansive" and that's just the beginning.
I kept taking up this book and putting it down, because after every few pages my head was spinning with illuminations, as it does during a reading of Leaves of Grass, you just can't keep immersed in it, it will drown you. Luke Gerwe's innovative design splatters the front cover with discarded ID cards Martin kept as souvenirs--so there are at least ten Doug Martins that I can count, a telling comment on our current notion of "identity" as a costume to be picked up and discarded to suite one's convenience. These cards, however, also parallel the narrative the poetry unfolds inside, from a red state obscurity in which "all there seemed to be/ was the endless war on TV," to the present moment of nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, when we "saw what killing us coming," when "we were asking for it, with our whiteasses." The life of the poet climaxes in assorted revelations, not a few of them chilling, but a few moments of a magnificent redemption, one that could hardly have been predicted.
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