INSTANT CLASSIC
by erica kaufman
INSTANT CLASSIC is precisely that; as soon as you start reading it, you say, oh, yeah, of course, why didn’t I think of that? Exploring the pathways of grammar-twisting, women’s, queer poetry and poetics in a single form that encapsulates many possibilities, kaufman’s book is one of the few that links us all.
Fine tuned economy balanced with rhythmic alliteration of word density almost belies the intention of "classic" yet erica kaufman exhibits a sophisticated fleetness in her line design actions. Beautiful, thoughtful, a music for the eye, heart, soul and mind.
- Thurston Moore
"How her work can fragment, bump, fall away, pile on and still exude an aura of warmth and kindness and slapstick good times sound is an alchemical mystery that makes postmodern poetry and erica kaufman’s art beating in it be the game in town always worth watching."
- Eileen Myles
"'We are all mutants in our own gaze,' says erica kaufman, in this set of Milton-inflected exploratory poems that casts its gaze on what we own and what owns us. In the beginning is variation and change; it is our common ground. Mutants of the world: unite! We have nothing to lose but our cowboy hats. INSTANT CLASSIC: Here & now. And how.”
- Charles Bernstein
erica kaufman is the author of censory impulse (Factory School 2009) and the co-editor of NO GENDER: Reflections on the Life and Work of kari edwards (Venn Diagram, 2009). Recent poems can be found online in Little Red Leaves and Elective Affinities, and in Lungfull!, The Death and Life of American Cities and Parkett. Prose and critical work can be found in: Rain Taxi, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Jacket2 and in The Color of Vowels: New York School Collaborations (ed. Mark Silverberg, Palgrave MacMillan, 2013). kaufman is the Associate Director of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College.