Exit theater
Date
2016
Authors
Lala, Mike, author
The Center for Literary Publishing, Colorado State University, publisher
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract
Selected by Tyrone Williams for the 2016 Colorado Prize for Poetry, Exit Theater casts classical elegy, with dazzling formal innovation, into a staggering work of contemporary, political polyphony. Through monologues, performance scripts, and poems of exquisite prosody, Mike Lala examines the human figure--as subject and object, enemy and ally--in the context of a progressively de-figured and hostile world. Catullus, Shakespeare, Cy Twombly, and Lydia Delectorskaya echo across engagements with Israeli generals, accused terrorists, State Department employees, nuclear scientists, Saturday Night Live actors, war criminals, malware, and a host of mythic, literary, and half-extant spectral characters. Amid the cacophony, Lala implicates every actor, including himself, in a web of shared culpability vis-a-vis consumerism, representation, speaking, writing, and making art against the backdrop of the endless, open wars of a post-Cold War, post-2001 era. Exit Theater is a debut of and against its time--a book about war, art, and what it means to make art in a time of war.
Description
Rights Access
Access is limited to the Adams State University, Colorado State University, Colorado State University Pueblo, Community College of Denver, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University Denver, Regis University, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, University of Denver, University of Northern Colorado, University of Wyoming, Utah State University and Western Colorado University communities only.
Subject
Consumption (Economics) -- Moral and ethical aspects -- Poetry
Justice -- Poetry