Live at the Bitter End

by Ed Pavlic

Overview

Recasting the “trial of the century,” Ed Pavli ’s vertiginous new collection puts a century of segregation on trial for its soul Set in the vernacular origins of modernity, Live at the Bitter End puts the racialized logic of 20th century aesthetics on trial. Mixing anonymous voices with the testimonies of figures such as Paul Cézanne, Charles Mingus, Emma Bardac, Erik Satie, Alberto Giacometti, Billie Holiday, Pierre Bonnard, Samuel Beckett, Miles Davis, and others, Ed Pavli weaves a playfully raucous and intimately violent work of satirical force. Adhering to the structure of a murder trial, Live at the Bitter End bears lyrical witness to racial separation, masquerade, mongrelization, and communion to show how those connections (in love, lust, trust and betrayal) sound deep in the textures of who we are.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780989979764
Publisher:	Saturnalia Books
Publication date:	03/01/2018
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.30(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

ED PAVLIC is author of seven collections of poems, and a two-time National Poetry Series winner. He has published essays, poems, fiction, and dramatic pieces in numerous magazines and journals, including Boston Review, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, and Callaloo. He is Distinguished Research Professor and teaches in the English department and in the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Georgia.

Table of Contents

I

Results Of The Polygraph: The Autobiography Of What If & When 1

Pretrial Conference in Chambers: Fogarty the D.A. & A. Tremble Richter the Inadmissable Private Eye 3

In Chambers: Local Law Enforcement Professionals 4

Voir Dire: Weed Out For Knowitalls 5

Voir Dire: The Aggrieved Address the Jury Pool 6

The Lineup @ 33 1/3 S. Latitude 7

Cubist Police Sketch: The One Who Held the Door 8

"In His Hands an Invisible Object": Stenographer's Error Anonymous Testimony 9

II

Deposition: Ms. Chapman's Phantom Cylinder & Willie Cornish on the Boat for Cuba 15

Oath Sworn or Gift in Bad Faith: The Deposition of Mélisande 16

Since I Fell for you": A Deposition 18

Deposition of the Corn-Toed E. R. Intern Confirms the Dangers of Affectation 20

Ivory Deposed In Braille: How Two Wrongs Equal Three Lefts 21

III

Character Witness: As Told to Indigo Wink & Silken Mask 27

Eye Witness to the Motive: The New Evidentiary Method as Reported in Science News "Chromatic Empiricism" 28

New Precedent from the Fifth Circuit: "It's as if Every Place were aware of all Other Places" 29

Autopsy Report: Objet Inquiétant I 31

Character Witness: The Prosecution's Coup: "It's not true that he couldn't": He Blind Herder of Moths & Executioner of Flies 33

Inadmissible Evidence: Coerced Testimory or "Pièces Froides" for Frau Frieda & The Veuve Noir De La Santé 35

IV

Contempt Of Court & Runaway Confession: "& Now that you are Mere Eye…" 41

V

Cross-Exmination: After the Read Back the D.A. Gets all Grinch-Cop / Bad-Cop 53

Affidavit from the Steinway Building: Betrothed & Bereaved & No Need for Applause 54

Confession of the Paid Expert: Five Reasons to try Children as Adults & Adults as if they're Already Dead 56

Attorney Client Privilege: Dress Rehearsal for Out-of-Key Testimony 58

Plea Bargain or Love Chant 59

Amicus Brief: Friends Who Know Don't Ask Anyone Who Asks Doesn't Really Want to Know Anyone Who Knows 60

VI

Jury Instructions: Judge Fogarty 67

Volume Twenty-One: A Murder Victim's Suicide Note or Attorney Client Privilege 68

Prosecution's Closing Argument: Warning: Objects In Mirror are Closer than they Appear in Retrospect 69

Scire Facias: Dr. Tchicai, Alias, Er from Beneath Beyond 71

Volume 22: Potshots at a Son-In-Law 72

Closing Address to the Jury the Defense Rests: "Four Pieces in the Form of a Pear" 75

Jury Deliberations For The Latecomer: Selected Queries & Aphorisms of Isidoro Capdepón Fernandez 77

What People are Saying About This

Fred Moten

“Black history is the history of poetry, wherein the line between ‘live flesh & dead meat’ is fine. Ed Pavli walks that line with dispossessive abandon, dispersed in groundedness like Charlie Haden or William Parker.”

Editorial Reviews

06/04/2018
Poet and academic Pavli (Who Can Afford to Improvise?) refracts an array of historical and modern voices of musicians, performers, composers, and artists through the frame of a racialized trial in this collection of elliptical lyrics. The narrative moves the reader through a history that dances in its own violent music, though the individual stories of its inhabitants slip away as they come closer into focus: “we/ clocked the pulse of footprints fossilized/ in broken glass we gave chase but didn’t know/ whether to taste the toll or pay off the tongue.” Attentive to the dialogue of snatched conversations, these poems demand a kind of listening that counterpoises the pleasure of the sound and breath with “White hands of pain without edge. White hours/ after sundown with no bottom.” The book revels in the construction of its clever fragments and the wit of its juxtapositions, asserting that “You/ glimpsed movements that remained, you didn’t want to see.” Though the work can be frustrating at times, collectively these poems simultaneously ask for and refuse witness of “the fine line between live flesh & dead meat.” Pavli leaves his readers with a dreamlike imprint, an approximation of the real conversation that must be had. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly