false 51975 1 0 979846 0817310975 9780817310974 1 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179964624m/979846.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1179964624s/979846.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/979846.Telling_It_Slant_Avant_Garde_Poetics_of_the_1990S 4.67 18 51975 4.20 65 9 750357 4.67 18 1 2001 1596515 1890311014 9781890311018 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1185648603m/1596515.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1185648603s/1596515.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1596515.Nothing_Happened_and_Besides_I_Wasn_t_There 4.44 9 51975 4.20 65 9 1999 1596517 1890311154 9781890311155 1 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1228107324m/1596517.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1228107324s/1596517.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1596517.Haze_Essays_Poems_Prose 4.43 7
--Rodrigo Toscano

Marvelous! A book that thinks! and that speaks out plainly and politically. In this collection of short essays, poems, and various hybrid genres, Mark Wallace takes poetry seriously--and often in the most tongue-in-cheek way, but below the quick wit is a belief in and love of language and the art it can make. Wallace has made that art here. "If poetry is, as I believe, the art that allows people access to their own complexity..." he writes, and goes on from there to show what can happen in a world where this is true. It's news.

--Cole Swensen ]]> 51975 4.20 65 9 2004 1596525 1931243603 9781931243605 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1185648651m/1596525.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1185648651s/1596525.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1596525.Temporary_Worker_Rides_a_Subway 4.20 5 A Temporary Worker Rides the Subway presents two long poem -sequences that explore and question contemporary language surrounding money and work. Using a widely varied set of poetic forms, Wallace highlights the inconsistencies and absurdities in contemporary notions about the degree to which money and work provide the value of people's lives. Selected by Nick Piombino, this book is the 2002 winner of the Gertrude Stein Award.

]]> 51975 4.20 65 9 2004 1596524 1883847184 9781883847180 1 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1256743153m/1596524.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1256743153s/1596524.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1596524.Vixens_Keep 3.50 4 51975 4.20 65 9 1995 1596510 1880713349 9781880713341 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1596510.Dead_Carnival 4.00 3 51975 4.20 65 9 2004 1596503 1934289264 9781934289266 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1185648544m/1596503.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1185648544s/1596503.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1596503.Walking_Dreams_Selected_Early_Tales 5.00 2 51975 4.20 65 9 2007 3420901 189031126X 9781890311261 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1228107561m/3420901.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1228107561s/3420901.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3420901.Felonies_of_Illusion 4.00 1 A master at making genre question itself, Mark Wallace gets the square peg in the round hole again. A stark and aphoristic long poem about living and working during the war—direct, wise, and brave enough to skip the decorative—bumps up against the witty, clanging, angry, top-speed, palimpsestuous title series—lyrics that swallow their own tails. Wallace is cynical, clear-eyed, and resolutely jokey on commerce, war, love (the "therapeutic use of commitment") and exhausted longing ("This day could be about today, leisurely and bright/if the days weren't stacked like nights inside it.") Nobody gets away with anything in Felonies of Illusion: we're all skewered till we grimace and grin.

Catherine Wagner


Mark Wallace invents only what's real. If democracies could talk, we would in fact be able to understand them, but we would need the help of poems like these. As its title suggests, the language of Felonies of llusion is premised on a sense of justice and reciprocity. The need is real, and thus the need for invention is constant. The writing betrays no qualms about showing this. There's serious play going on here.

Bob Perelman


Elegaic without strings, passionate without bravado, up the tragic creek without a cathartic paddle, Mark Wallace’s Felonies of Illusion is an intensely personal collection of valedictions, an extended suite of lyric leavetakings written in the infinite series of penultimate milliseconds before an always-imminent obliteration—a “now” that “is not that long from now.” These already painful goodbyes, however, are suspended in a nervewracking holding pattern as “the total system / shouts back that there’s no way to leave.” Wallace rehearses the purgatorial illogic of perpetual orange alert with unsparing gravity, but also with empathy and wit. His poems confront us with the human truth of the narratives we spin daily in the name of individual survival at the same time that they caution us not to “get / too attached to the story told / imploding.”

K. Silem Mohammad]]> 51975 4.20 65 9 2008 1460737 0922668108 9780922668106 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1460737.Complications_from_Standing_in_a_Circle_The_Dictionary_Poems 3.00 1 51975 4.20 65 9 1993 7336662 0800664612 9780800664619 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7336662-green-christianity 0.0 0 51975 4.20 65 9 2010