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War
On Words
by John Bradley
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It Now
Introduction
January 3, 2003
Dear John Bradley,
Why does a pumpkin float in the fjord? Why does
a baby crawl into pumpkin? Why does John Bradley pester me so?
No, I don’t think it a good idea for you to
gather all your Tomaz Salamun delusions into one larger delusion,
publish it, and let it be spread like a cosmic mange. No, I will
not write an introduction, preface, foreword, afterword, or anathema
(though the latter is quite tempting, I admit). I think this would
only make worse your state of multiple confusements. No, I will
not publicly debate you on a cable program of my or anyone else’s
choosing. I ask that you go back to being the old John Bradley
we all know and pretty much liked.
At least let me pay for the first doctor visit.
A mental health worker is after all just another worker, though
in need, it is true, of some mental health treatments. Still,
it might calm you and clear away some of your fogs.
Please refrain from publishing this letter. Or I
will set my dogs loose on your liver.
With apologetic affection,
Tomaz
Note on Tomaz Salamun’s
Introduction
January 4, 2003
Reader,
Now you can see what I have been going through.
All I can say in reply to this act of servile arrogance is: Do
not believe that Tomaz Salamun always speaks for Tomaz Salamun.
He says so much that is so contradictory how can it all fit into
one Tomaz Salamun? The “confusements” he speaks of
sprout from his sputum as well as mine.
And to think this all began by my purchasing a used
copy of his book with three of his letters inside (as you will
see in the next series of letters). How can he continue to blame
and punish me for this act of coincidence? Or perhaps it is not
an act of coincidence? Did NASA stage the 1969 moon landing? Am
I losing my hair due to something in the water? Did Salamun tell
my mother not answer my calls?
You can see the dangerous effects of reading and
corresponding with Salamun. Be forewarned.
In the spirit of anti-confusement,
John
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War on Words : The John Bradley/Tomaz Salamun* Confusement.
Featuring Correspondence and Occasional Outbursts
of Poetry
by Tomaz Salamun* and John Bradley
With a Preface by Patti Smith
ISBN: 0975922734
$15
"Wow! It might be Nonsalamuns may not enjoy as much as I did,
but for our tribe--- I went through different stages: shock, amazement,
I was pale, laughter - a lot -, awe, guilt, aphssss!, even my mind
wanted to take off for a moment, but mostly gratitude, I was moved;
I am moved."
- Tomaz Salamun
In the first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, near
the end of the sketch, “The Funniest Joke in the World”
(which chronicles the exploits of “the killer joke”),
Eric Idle soberly announces, “In 1945, Peace broke out. It
was the end of the Joke. Joke warfare was banned at a special session
of the Geneva Convention.” John Bradley similarly investigates
the inside-out of things in his explosive new book, War on Words,
in which the “war” he wages on conventional language,
on our bought and staid habits of mind, is a discursive demolition
that interrogates the contamination of the very root systems of
our words and concepts of “ownership,” “voice,”
and “intellectual property.” Profoundly Surreal, but
never merely clever, Bradley’s work glistens with the ebullience
of the 1920’s Libertine, sounding him as a clear inheritor
of La Revolution Surrealiste, and his poems are as remarkable, meaningful,
and necessary as anything being written today. War on Words is an
extraordinary book, seriously playful in the ways anthropologist
Clifford Geertz might describe the significance of “deep play”
among the indigenous cultures of Bali. I have read Bradley’s
work faithfully for more than 25 years, and it is no exaggeration
to say he is one of the two or three most important poets among
us. But for those of you who distrust enthusiasm, earned and tempered
in this case as it most certainly is, let me simply say, “This
is a good book. I like it a lot.”
—George Kalamaras
John Bradley is one of the hidden Greats. And this utterly riveting
Poetic Detective story is the greatest collaboration in American
poetry since Jack Spicer's After Lorca. It will also prove to be,
I have no doubt, Tomaz Salamun's most famous book.
—Kent Johnson
John Bradley received an MA in English from Colorado State University
and an MFA in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University.
His book of poetry Love-In-Idleness won the Washington Prize. He
is the editor of Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age
and Learning to Glow: A Nuclear Reader. Bradley lives with his wife,
Jana, in DeKalb, where he teaches writing at Northern Illinois University.
He is the recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship
in poetry.
Book Information:
· Paperback: 145 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] (March 2006)
· ISBN: 0975922734
· Product Number: 51705937
Buy
It Now
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