The Multiple

An unspeakably excessive reality is met with unremitting intensity in this collection of poetry—the imbroglio of entwinements and failed copulas within and around humankind compose the “multiple” in question, the reality underlying and giving lie to society’s stereotypes. Witty, multitonal, musical, propositional, and painterly, the poems interweave personal narrative with political crises and make no effort to take the edge off the razor-sharp examination of the contemporary sociopolitical situation that takes shape throughout the collection. What emerges in the lines is as surprising and unforgiving as it is disarmingly delightful, creating an engaging lyricism that appeals to philosophy as well as literature.

Calvin Bedient is a professor emeritus at the University of California–Los Angeles and the coeditor of Lana Turner. He is also a critic whose reviews have appeared in the Boston Review, the New York Times Book Review, the New Republic, the Nation, Partisan Review, and Salmagundi. His books and collections of poetry include Candy Necklace, Days of Unwilling, Eight Contemporary Poets, He Do the Police in Different Voices, The Violence of the Morning, and The Yeats Brothers and Modernism’s Love of Motion. He lives in Santa Monica, California.