Phoebe 2002: An Essay in Verse

by David Trinidad

Overview

“A triumph, a contemporary satyrican.”—D.A. Powell

This three-way, groundbreaking, e-mail deconstruction of All About Eve is a treasure-trove of poetic forms, cinephile gossip and literary visitations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781885586896
Publisher:	Turtle Point Press
Publication date:	04/01/2000
Pages:	650
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 10.70(h) x 1.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David Trinidad teaches at Columbia College, Chicago. He has taught at Rutgers, Princeton and Antioch (L.A.). His previous poetry collection, Plasticville, was published by Turtle Point Press in 2000. That book was shortlisted for the Lenore Marshall Prize of The Academy of American Poets. With Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton he edited Saints of Hysteria.

Editorial Reviews

I want to say, right off, that I think Phoebe 2002 is a brilliant book. It's funny, peculiar, sometimes poetic, restless, artless and moving. It's also exasperating, trivial and, in the end, it may be most valuable as sheer, playful provocation. I felt, reading it, as Sterne's contemporaries must have felt reading Tristram Shandy.

Toronto Globe

Longer than Olson's Maximus poems and heavier than an Oscar, this astonishing and hallucinogenic collaborative epic glorifies All About Eve's Margo Channing as a genuine heroine, pondering the consequences of true love while battling inexorable Time and a young, ambitious rival from the sticks. While there are classic flourishes and a descent into hell (here, the ladies' room at the Stork Club), it's safe to say there's never been a book like this, though Trinidad prepared the way with works like Plasticville, and Canadian novelist Crosbie has written gritty, experimental romans clef (Paul's Case, 1997) of murder and madness. The poem's loony operatics glory in showmanship, as the narrative dissolves into arias of sheer technique: double acrostics, sestinas, calligrams including a champagne glass with "o" for bubbles, cinquains, villanelles and ghazals. Readers allergic to the inspirational "muses" here (including Bette Davis, Jayne Mansfield and Jacqueline Susann), or, for that matter, to riotous verse ambition, will come away with a new appreciation for the innumerable ways in which all nature and artifice are secretly and splendidly interconnected-just like the authors. Poets are not supposed to combine and recombine like strands of Rapunzel's hair, and Conway (a New York-based poet), Crosbie and Trinidad have a great regard for their own skill and hijinks. Their transposed e-mails can be cloying, but the messy fun of smudging the boundaries between classical and popular culture proves infectious in the long run. In the end, the most preposterous book of the season turns out to be one of the finest. (Nov. 1) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly