Gowanus Atropolis Signed Edition

"Gowanus Atropolis attempts to reconcile the toxicity of the titular Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn and the east river in "Manahatta" with the poet's search for the pastoral in New York City. A queer elegy for when language might have been prior to thought, where the phrase becomes the thought, rather than the other way around — so that the dystopic might become, if not utopic, at least measurable / pleasurable, "melodious offal." "Once in a while there are poems which create entire fresh terrain. And I'm saying too that it's hard to come home from it, locator dials set anew. I'm jangling from the return, like the world had descended upon me so quickly through the poems it was some time before I realized I was still in one piece, and minted with a beautiful little scar. Julian's deviance is a hazard of poems which bend the muscle of light. I can hardly wait to share our extra strength when we've all read them!" CAConrad

"Brolaski's debut stages a sprawling collision of post-punk, radical-queer spontaneity with rule-governed attention to language and speech: almost all Brolaski's poems combine obtrusively antiquated language, more or less Chaucerian Middle English, with new spellings and new words taken from rappers and from queer radical youth. 'wanton until noon/ wel cd they speke englysshe// polymorphously it's the juice/ n I stand by my ambivalent sidekick,' Brolaski writes (in 'to be kush is not to be chronic'); elsewhere he sees a 'wimp become hunk/ omfg in a pneumatic tube.' The genderless pronoun 'xe' ('xe is my enemigma/ & shall endure all privilege') and a succession of New York local references (starting with the Gowanus Canal of the title) announce Brolaski's allegiance to a defiantly independent, politically alert community; by far the longest poem here commemorates the experimental writer and gender activist kari edwards. Brolaski's staccato pacing and in-your-face treatments of sex and war demand an immediate enthusiastic attention, which they may not always repay; if 'the seer wit understanding/ almost undercut hir prophecy,' as Brolaski writes, these lines can seem to undercut themselves. Without their typographical oddities, they may seem less substantial than the work of Brolaski's peers. Nonetheless they are powerful utterances, symbols and actions that can both shock and delight; devotees of, for example, C. A. Conrad might find here exactly what they need. (Apr.)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Poetry. LGBT Studies. GOWANUS ATROPOLIS attempts to reconcile the toxicity of the titular Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn and the east river in "Manahatta" with the poet's search for the pastoral in New York City. A queer elegy for when language might have been prior to thought, where the phrase becomes the thought, rather than the other way around—so that the dystopic might become, if not utopic, at least measurable / pleasurable, "melodious offal." "Once in a while there are poems which create entire fresh terrain. And I'm saying too that it's hard to come home from it, locator dials set anew. I'm jangling from the return, like the world had descended upon me so quickly through the poems it was some time before I realized I was still in one piece, and minted with a beautiful little scar. Julian's deviance is a hazard of poems which bend the muscle of light. I can hardly wait to share our extra strength when we've all read them!"—CAConrad.

Julian T. Brolaski is the author of GOWANUS ATROPOLIS (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011) the chapbooks Hellish Death Monsters (Spooky Press, 2001), Letters to Hank Williams (True West Press, 2003), The Daily Usonian (Atticus/Finch, 2004), Madame Bovary's Diary (Cy Press, 2005), and A Buck in a Corridor (flynpyntar, 2008). Brolaski's second full-length book, ADVICE FOR LOVERS, is forthcoming from City Lights Publishers in Spring 2012. Brolaski lives in Brooklyn where xe is an editor at Litmus Press, curates vaudeville shows, and plays country music with The Low and the Lonesome.