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Spencer Selby:
SOUND OFF


Detour Press
1506 Grand Ave. #3
St. Paul MN, 55105


64 pp., $7.95

A collection of poems illuminated by ironic double entendre: "sound off" as protest literature by poets voicing their rage at toxic-waste dump Americana, or, equally, as a state of being akin to watching t.v. with the volume turned down. The condition of language echoes the condition of our world: "Extensive straightforward meaning/ goes funny before it's written / in the face of impending disaster." Because linear forms of writing and thinking yield nothing but distorted copies of what has come before, Selby advocates a poetic language informed by experience: "Walk the path and live for knowledge/ that's exasperated by what you see."--Susan Smith Nash


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This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #5,
Copyright Burning Press 1994, 1996.

Contact the editor, luigi-bob drake, at Burning Press