City Lights Publishers Presents 'In Memory of an Angel' By David Shapiro
By: Christina Mancuso Apr. 12, 2017
City Lights Publishers presents In Memory of an Angel By David Shapiro.
"A Taoist, a Kabbalist, and a Dadaist walk into a bar. They discover that the bar is really David Shapiro's new book of poems . . . His playful erudition draws in everyone from Andy Warhol, to Kenneth Koch, to John Dewey--and it welcomes you as well, in its democratic embrace."--Elaine Equi
"David Shapiro published his first book, January: A Book of Poems, while still a teenager. Since then, now for over fifty years, he has remained one of our very finest American poets. His mind is illuminated and his poems luminous. In Memory of an Angel is a strikingly beautiful and invaluable selection of his work!"--Jim Jarmusch
"It's always a deep pleasure when David Shapiro has a new book, he never ceases to astonish, he has built a singular, hyper-lyrical, always brilliant poetry.In Memory of an Angel is filled with spells and charms and spinning language, elegy, and wild proclamations; as he writes: 'I invented the new movement / without photographs like / the affair of the whole being / as it was said ferocious and / intimate and I invent it / to last.' And so it will."--Peter Gizzi
"In Memory of an Angel mesmerizes with virtuosic greatness; a deft masterwork by a poet's poet whose sui generis genius has for five decades defied and invigorated the New York School label. Shapiro upends language not for less meaning, but more-and for a multilayered storytelling sufficiently unfettered to get at life's labyrinthine mix of 'cardboard and gold' promise and peril."--Kate Farrell
"David Shapiro is a great poet, one of the best poets writing today: his poems are musical, capacious, dark, funny, life-affirming, skeptical, and passionate ... Repetition and variation enact and embody what is necessary: music is thought is dramatic action: Shapiro's poems breathe and think and feel with the finest, most intense, and most generous awareness. In Memory of an Angel is a masterpiece, a book we need now and will need forever."--Joseph Lease
Paperback | ISBN 9780872867130 | $14.95
CLICK HERE TO BUY AT 30% OFF - ONLY WHEN ORDERING FROM CITYLIGHTS.COMJoin us on Thursday, April 27th at 7PM! City Lights celebrates the release of David Shapiro's In Memory of an Angel. David will read from his new collection, with special guest Joseph Lease.
The Party
Poetry could crash any Presidential party
But Poetry will not crash the Presidential party
because poetry is the Presidential party.
Before the party, heads flowed
after the party, even her lap knees and hair were bitter
Criticize the clothes not the rabbi
you have nothing to apologize for
except certain lies.
The rabbi rises to shake the hand of the prostitute
And Walt Whitman
The President Rises
Nobody at the party is strange except the President
everyone at the party knows everyone at the party
And there is Liberty, with the famous gun in her hand!
The President rises
To shake the hands of Poetry
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