VILE LILT
by Nada Gordon
Nada Gordon’s Vile Lilt maximizes reader joy. Replete with a thousand new words, outrageous images and ornamental excess, Vile Lilt tilts at and topples our literary expectations into a brackish puddle where countless, unfettered beings enter and engage our bodies and minds. Gagging we sit up with the realization that we're in the presence of new poetry; Vile Lilt takes the reader elsewhere.
"In my mind there's a dream-world where ornament, agon, & lyric have fused to make a wonderland, bristling with intellect, that goes rippling through me like a fetid & brocaded bolt of rainbow silk. Then I remember, oh right, the world that I'm dreaming of is sung into being by Nada Gordon, year by year, & now, with exemplary turbulence, here in this book. As a livid riposte to dry piety, these poems puncture the old stolid habits. As a wild embrace of what's possible in writing, they open an extravagant horizon. For me, when I'm reading these 'versus,' the dreams that I dream really do come true."
- Dana Ward
Nada Gordon was born in Oakland in 1964 and has lived in Bolinas, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Brooklyn. Her seven books of poetry include Vile Lilt and Scented Rushes from Roof Books. A founding member of the Flarf Collective, she has performed widely in the USA and abroad. She teaches English as a Foreign Language at Pratt Institute and is at work on a holographic memoir.