Light Reading ranges from micro-minimalist poems to all-encompassing lyric declarations and metatextual litanies. The book’s first section, “Light Reading,” begins with an aubade and ends with a lullaby. In between, these short poems grapple with the marks words make on existence, exploring themes of language and memory, and confronting the work of great poets and thinkers. The second section of the book, “Bagatelles for Typewriter,” includes an elegy for Czech playwright and President Vclav Havel, and poems inspired by the composers Philip Glass, Gyrgy Ligeti and Johnny Rotten, among others. These open-ended lyrical narratives playfully explode the minimalist complexity of the previous poems. The book’s third section, “Arrangements,” is a series of creative directives for poetry that takes metatext to the max. Light Reading exhibits a startling formal range and a delightful eclecticism of poetic thought. The poems in Light Reading interrupt silence with whispers, occasional shouts, erasures’ spaces. Delbos’ lines resonate with startling spontaneity and sprezzatura. A master minimalist, he writes with risible daring and poignance. His mind’s at poetic play throughout these refreshing poems, leaping with erudition, oneiric strangeness, and Czech allusions that would charm Kafka.

Format: Paperback
Published: in UK in 2019
Publisher: Blazevox
Pages: 97
Language: English
ISBN 13: 9781609643201
ISBN 10: 1609643208