Kent Johnson

Homage to the Last Avant-garde Kent Johnson

Poetry. HOMAGE TO THE LAST AVANT-GARDE contains a wide variety of poems and prose, representing all strands of Johnson's work: versions from the Greek, traduced to an extraordinary degree; anti-war poems, overflowing with rage; stink-bombs tossed in the direction of some famous poets, mostly meant in an ironic, joshing way. But not all. And then there are memoir poems of persons met and places visited, that may well be documentary in nature, or may also be artfully disguised. Memory is, after all, an awkward thing, and not to be trusted, just as politicians and their henchmen are not and there is no irony in their treatment in this book. No, sir, none at all. "Best known for the Araki Yasusada incident, Kent Johnson is a deadly serious, brilliant subversive. His brand of fiction is derived from the fabulist Borges, Michaux, and magic realism, but with a slightly nasty edge. 'I am in awe of you,' I emailed him recently and meant it ..."--Linh Dinh.