Ivan Blatny

For Czech-English émigré Ivan Blatny's poetry, terms like exile
literature, subversion, appropriation, collage, pun, homophony, and
even hybridity seem too limited, too stable. In an age where many –
rightly – are suspicious of official verse cultures, here is the voice
from a true underground – not the official alternative poetry of the
day, but that minorizing, fluctuating underground that undoes
hierarchical notions of language and culture. Blatny's heteroglossic
poems are wonderfully strange, prosaic, sparse and distracted at the
same time. They are as beautiful and singular as Vallejo's Trilce.


That's my promotional blurb for Ivan Blatny's brilliant book "The Drug of Art", forthcoming from Ugly Duckling in the near future (and we have a selection in the current Action,Yes). This really is a brilliant book. Required reading for sure.