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THE FUTURE OF MEMORY

by Bob Perelman

"Bob Perelman is one of our wittiest poets, but his new book, The Future of Memory, is as scary as it is funny. It presents the poem itself as doomed human subject in time. The poet is both an emblem of Western subjectivity and the very figure of the fool. Here he is on his knees, peeping at what he hopes is Eternity. This moment caught between shame and revelation is, in Perelman's hands, simply our present. Now the word "poem" is "a shtetl photographed." Tomorrow we empty out/the Grecian Urn." In this brilliant, tragi-comic work, the "speaking subject" gets his comeupance."
- Rae Armantrout