The Camel’s Pedestal, Poems 2009–2017 by Anne Tardos

There is a splendid lucidity to Tardos’s writing, a jesting, inquisitive spirit nimbly examining the relationship between language and reality in inventive articulations that jingle with wit and perceptivity. Lines like “I am lost in a desert of my own making” and “Do words work as wood works” juggle phenomenology, advancing what Tardos observes as “the true state of things expressed in phenomena but inexpressible in language.” Contradiction, paradox, incongruity; it’s all here, the entire caravan of linguistic apparatus crossing the dunes of this enigma, this desolation of self-awareness, this epistemology of dromedaries on the very edge of things. This collection is well-crafted, precise, imaginative, clear. I feel a great intelligence moving among these words. It’s exhilarating. This is the kind of work that inspires me.

—John Olson

Free-ranging, intelligent, a poetry of wit and survival—to be “crazy not to go crazy” and not going crazy and making art in the face of that: “finally taking a stand” . . . “there is no shortage of things to do on the path to a better life” and “letting things be,” “tip-toeing around the good and the terrible”—it’s so good to be taken to the source so lightly, so often, without eliding the brutal, the complex, the incomprehensible or the gorgeous. This is the book that does that. Reader, read on . . .

—Maurice Scully

Anne Tardos, French-born American poet, is the author of ten books of poetry, and editor of three collections of poetry by Jackson Mac Low. Her work has been translated and published in dozens of anthologies and journals around the world. Tardos pioneered a unique multilingual writing style, often complementing her texts with video stills, photographs, and collages. Her writing is renowned for its fluid use of multiple languages and its innovative forms. She has worked in numerous media, creating performance pieces, radio plays, videos, and musical compositions. Her multilingual and multimedia works have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the West German Radio, WDR; the XLIV Venice Biennale; and in many international sound poetry festivals, including Festival La Bâtie, Geneva; text-ljud Festival, Stockholm; Scene Wien, Vienna; and Zwischentoene, Cologne. Since moving to New York in 1966, she maintained lifelong friendships with artists Richard Lindner, Saul Steinberg, Sam Francis, Larry Rivers, Vito Acconci, Ay-O, John Cage, Judith Malina, Simone Forti, Nam June Paik, Charlotte Moorman, George Maciunas; art dealer Felix Landau, architects Vally and Serge Sabarsky; poets Jackson Mac Low (longtime partner and collaborator), Jerome Rothenberg, Lyn Hejinian, Anne Waldman, Robert Creeley, and other figures of the New York avant-garde. A Fellow in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Tardos lives in New York City with her husband, the composer Michael Byron.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 104 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-295-2

$16

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