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The Little Edges (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

The Little Edges is a collection of poems that extends poet Fred Moten’s experiments in what he calls “shaped prose”—a way of arranging prose in rhythmic blocks, or sometimes shards, in the interest of audio-visual patterning. Shaped prose is a form that works the “little edges” of lyric and discourse, and radiates out into the space between them. As occasional pieces, many of the poems in the book are the result of a request or commission to comment upon a work of art, or to memorialize a particular moment or person. In Moten’s poems, the matter and energy of a singular event or person are transformed by their entrance into the social space that they, in turn, transform. An online reader’s companion is available at http://fredmoten.site.wesleyan.edu.

Series: Wesleyan Poetry Series

Paperback: 96 pages

Publisher: Wesleyan (July 5, 2016)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0819576700

ISBN-13: 978-0819576705

Product Dimensions: 8 x 0.3 x 10 inches

Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Best Sellers Rank: #560,522 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #236 in Books > Literature & Fiction > African American > Poetry #2556 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > United States #3148 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Specific Demographics > African-American Studies

It's probably too bad, for the sake of "objectivity", that I'm the first to write a Review of this book, as I don't think I can do so without being over-the-top with praise (and potentially coming across in a manner I don't intend), but...wow...this book blew me away.There's the general floor, if you will, of great writing that is out there in the contemporary poetry scene filled with a menagerie of astounding voices, then there's the "gods" of literature flying high above that all writers of poetry have their gaze pointed towards (take your pick: Eliot, Stevens, Dickinson...etc), then somewhere in between (closer to the latter) is Moten. Why this man doesn't have a Pulitzer as of yet is beyond me...the rhythm, the refined abstraction, the precise distribution of words on the page, the ever-creative Afro-American colloquial voice interwoven with the high lexical register of academia is so brilliant, and so flawlessly fused together in this book it's akin to listening to Coltrane's "Ascention" for the first time and feeling it to be something of a spiritual experience. I can't recommend this book enough, even if I didn't "get it" right away (more than likely I never will, for a host of reasons, and I'm completely fine with that, as this is what makes Great Art, with a capital G and A).With the utmost earnestness: Do yourself a favor and purchase this glorious exploration of language, and if you happen to be on the Pulitzer Committee (and enjoy reading gushing Reviews on ), please, for the love of all that is good in America and the English language, give this man your prize.

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