ANC022/023: Beautiful Decay/The Cruel Radiance of What Is by Howie Good
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Conservative estimates place the number of earthworms burrowing beneath us at anywhere from sixty to four hundred per square meter. Among the numerous ecological benefits these hermaphroditic workhorses provide us is the endless digestion of any and all organic matter they can fit within their pharynx. Gliding silently through dead earth, the earthworm leaves a trail of fertile excretions rich in minerals and potential.
The process implemented by poet Howie Good correlates with that of the earthworm, transforming the banal and conventional into fresh forms alive with new subjects, meanings, and idioms. Freeing text from its primary meaning, Good seeks to breathe life into the cultural consciousness ensnared by predictable verse and language. His work employs a poetic derangement of the ordinary, collapsing oppressive expectations and leaving a delirious dream logic in their place. We are proud to offer two collections of Good's work as a single, stunning object. Beautiful Decay features prose poems triangulating themes of disturbance, destruction, and delusion, while The Cruel Radiance of What Is showcases subversive collage poems sourced from a range of quotidian texts. When the former's "clouds of Zyklon B . . . roll in at dusk" and cloud your vision, simply flip the book over and lose yourself in the invented paradoxes of the latter. Tonal counterpoints, these two titles anthologize a viewpoint abundant in a fertility all its own. |
