{"id":9064,"date":"2016-07-12T12:56:44","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T16:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/?page_id=9064"},"modified":"2022-10-18T11:22:31","modified_gmt":"2022-10-18T15:22:31","slug":"message","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/message\/","title":{"rendered":"Off Message"},"content":{"rendered":"

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paper \u2022 98\u00a0pages \u2022 15.95
\nISBN-13: 978-1-935536-78-9<\/p>\n

Add to Cart<\/a>
\n[\/column]
\n[column col=”3\/4″]
\nWinner of the 2017 Housatonic Book Award in Poetry<\/p>\n

Off Message<\/em><\/h1>\n

Joel Brouwer<\/h2>\n

In meditations on everything from Marx to the Marianas Trench, Off Message<\/em> probes the troubling corners of our globalized lives with humor, pathos, and verve. Political without being preachy, these poems are unafraid to implicate themselves: like us, their speakers are part of the problem, and their struggles highlight the absurdities of broadband capitalism. What should we make of televised warfare, revitalized totalitarianism, and spectacular environmental degradation? Which pages should we highlight in our history books? Off Message<\/em> wrestles with these questions by overlaying the near and the far, the lyric and encyclopedic. Each poem is a mixtape, an abandoned essay, a satire of modern conscience. Veering from the Deepwater Horizon disaster to Kasparov\u2019s chess match against Deep Blue, they revel in the sights and sounds of information overload even as they yearn for knowledge and connection in our hyper-mediated present.<\/p>\n

from “Observations in a Port City,” from\u00a0Off Message<\/em>:<\/p>\n

...Of bodies\nchanged to other forms I sing. The palazzos\nof the oligarchs are now the palazzos\nof the oligarchs: Paribas, DB, Credit Suisse.\nMarco Polo dictated his travels\nin the prison of the Casa delle Compere\ndi San Giorgio, Europe\u2019s oldest bank,\nso both interest and China were invented there.\nIt\u2019s the port authority now, of course.\nA young woman helped a blind man\nnavigate the piazza. It was either kindness\nor her job. Everything is changed; nothing\nceases. The dead woman who ran for it.\nThe dead woman who got too old. The dead woman\nweeping at the gangplank to the Tunis ferry\nwith a dirty peony of Euros but no passport.\nI cannot recommend the tour of Columbus\u2019s house.\nThe price of admission is extortionate\nand also he never lived there. He\u2019s crossing\nborders drawn in the air. He speaks\nevery language. Everything is translated;\nnothing signifies. ...\n\n[\/column]\nAbout the Author<\/a>\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[column col=”1\/4″] paper \u2022 98\u00a0pages \u2022 15.95 ISBN-13: 978-1-935536-78-9 Add to Cart [\/column] [column col=”3\/4″] Winner of the 2017 Housatonic Book Award in Poetry Off Message Joel Brouwer In meditations on everything from Marx to the Marianas Trench, Off Message probes the troubling corners of our globalized lives with humor, pathos, and verve. Political without […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9064","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9064"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18205,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9064\/revisions\/18205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}