Neighbour Procedure
By Rachel Zolf
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
Rachel Zolf’s powerful follow-up to the Trillium Award-winning Human Resources is a virtuoso polyvocal correspondence with the daily news, ancient scripture and contemporary theory that puts the ongoing conï¬?ict in Israel/Palestine ï¬ *rmly in the crosshairs. Plucked from a mineï¬ *eld of competing knowledges, media and public texts, Neighbour Procedure sees Zolf assemble an arsenal of poetic procedures and words borrowed froma cast of unlikely neighbours, including Mark Twain, Dadaist Marcel Janco, blogger-poet Ron Silliman and two women at the gym. The result is a dynamic constellation where humour and horror sit poised at the threshold of ethics and politics.
'Neighbour Procedure … pack[s] an intellectual punch that reminds us, once again, of the powerhouse generations of innovative feminist poets that continually challenge and transform our understanding of what poetic texts can do.'
– Matrix Magazine
‘This is an extraordinary collection of poems, and yet I hesitate in saying this, since something happens to poetry in these pages, so I no longer know what precisely poetry is or can be. In fact, Rachel Zolf brings an incredible range of readings to bear on the poetic line. If there is a mixing of media within these lines, there is also a proliferation of tongues, an effort to let language collide to produce a more acute and anguished experience of war. Israel and Palestine recur in the fits and starts of meditation offered here where language follows unpredictable sequences and finds itself suddenly stuttering in its vowels. There is mourning, rage and some brave and difficult effort to speak across traditions, languages, to avow loss, to expose the colder rationalities of occupation and war, and a linguistic fathoming of the ethics of proximity. This is courageous and moving work that feels like the struggle of a lifetime condensed into potent lines.’ – Judith Butler
‘Politics and poetry are a volatile mix. Yes, except that the voices of war and terrorism are themselves defiantly both. Zolf shows us this truth, and so her lyrics s(t)ing, acidly.’ – George Elliott Clarke, author of George and Rue
‘Neighbour Procedure is the most realized conceptual-modular book of political poetry I’ve read to date; Zolf’s language-motion escapes several nation-states’ culture capture zones while re-threading the very notion of “self *-representational purposivity.’ – Rodrigo Toscano
‘This book is a sharp, painful cry against the tyranny of the monologic.’ – Charles Bernstein
‘There is a madness in thinking the problem of Israel and Palestine can be thought through or sorted out, a philosophical conundrum or puzzle of language; and there's a despair in thinking that reason has lost its right, leaving all to violence. In Neighbour Procedure, Zolf chooses madness, but yields to despair her suspicion that reason never had a right – only a discourse of ruins, monuments and counter-monuments to hope.’ – Benjamin Friedlander
Rachel Zolf
Rachel Zolf’s writing practice explores interrelated materialist questions concerning memory, history, knowledge, subjectivity, and the conceptual limits of language and meaning. She is particularly interested in how ethics founders on the shoals of the political. Her books of poetry include Neighbour Procedure (2010); Human Resources (2007), which won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award; Masque (2004), finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry; and Her absence, this wanderer (1999). Among her many collaborations with other artists, she wrote the film The Light Club of Vizcaya: A Women's Picture, directed by New York artist Josiah McElheny, which premiered at Art Basel Miami 2012. She has taught at New York’s The New School University and the University of Calgary.
Read more from Rachel Zolf
Human Resources Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Janey's Arcadia Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to Neighbour Procedure
Related ebooks
Modern and Normal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Erasures Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A Young Recruit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSally's Hair: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mars Being Red Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMeasures of Expatriation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jump the Clock: New & Selected Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Criss Cross Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsN/O Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5BAX 2015: Best American Experimental Writing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heat Wake Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCinema of the Present Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lesser Fields Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Front Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSaid Like Reeds or Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reel to Reel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAddress Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Robeson Street Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Soft Targets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Sentinel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Transmutation of Love and Avant-Garde Poetics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twice Told Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJuly Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Revisionist & The Astropastorals Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSyllabus of Errors: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Common Sense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5wild horses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHome Burial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Archeophonics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Poetry For You
Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pillow Thoughts II: Healing the Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Road Not Taken and other Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Works Of Oscar Wilde Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Neighbour Procedure
5 ratings0 reviews