Additional information
by Ralph La Charity (Author)
This collection Beat Poetry is meant to be spoken aloud, performance is key. It is the final book in La Charity's trilogy, following Litanies Said Handedly and Blood Vertigo. It is richly illustrated with original collages by the author.
According to the La Charity:
"Breath neither sees nor does it consent to last. Print lasts as its singular job, soundlessly so. And the vain attempt to simultaneously straddle both the seen and the heard was not in the cards back when Poetry was birthed - back then, printed books like this one weren't even in the picture. And even when printed collections did get into the picture, they did so principally as aids to Memory - which, come to think of it, and prior to the rise of print media, was the specific & profound province of the Poets. Ah but, once memory was usurped by the written, editors became figures of unwonted influence & breath-bound poets ended up as lesser beings. Hence the marginalization of sound itself, the very heartbeat of what Poetry had always been, since the Dawn of Breath's Shaping of the manswarm's speech into Song.
The fact that Poetry is a verb, actively brief in its occasions, is Breath's decree: Print has a wholly other agenda, one under the rule of editorial decree. What determines the value of the Poet's output ? Used to be ears were the judge of that, but, since the rise of print, the eye has gained supremacy - and the eye is where editorial fiat resides, now & since the written made it so, oh so many silent centuries ago.
Ultimately, the work in this book mustneeds be heard by its Poet to be believed . . .ah but still, and even then . . ."
