The Year of the Rooster

by Noah Eli Gordon

The Year of the Rooster offers in its title work a kinetic, convulsive, epic poem that explores and explodes through slippery, circumspect pronouns expectations of gender, the authority of artifice, the act of looking, and the action of thought. Is the rooster a trope? Is he a trooper? Maybe he’s a she and she’s the expectation of masculine bravado he’s trying to unmask. Part action painting, part abstract estrangement, part enactment of the artist’s uncertainty about all things art, the weird world of this poem is forever in flux, off-kilter, unanswerable. Planting bullets in the flowerbed of the sonnet, “Diminishing Returns” and “Returning Diminishments,” two extended, meditative yet humorous suites, bookend the title poem.

Genres: Poetry

144 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2013

About the author

Noah Eli Gordon was an American poet, editor, and publisher.

Reviews

[Bill Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hear that rooster?

Imperative images blown to atoms or a handful of dust. Sleep shattered, restless with a touch of the bucolic. Fragments of fragments reassembled into the daylight imperative, briefly transcribed then gone.

It’s time to wake up.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I love most about The Year of the Rooster (besides the bad ass artwork - angry roosters have never looked this expressive) is the shape and movement of the poems. The urgency of ideas and narrative is expertly matched by Gordon's speed and layout, which I especially found in "The Next Year: Did You Drop This Word". And exciting collection that is fun but explores big, important ideas, as well.

[Alyson Hagy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a mixed reaction to THE YEAR OF THE ROOSTER, mostly in a good way. (Thus the 4 stars.) Gordon is deft, wicked, witty, inventive. His poems had me asking myself "What should a poem be?" at almost every turn. He's brilliant with language and expectation; he's daring with form. I was, by turns, bedazzled and...lost. That's probably okay. It's not always bad to be lost. And I can say this for sure: Gordon is someone I'll read in the future. His sensibility is fascinating.