Publisher's Synopsis
Poetry. In this, his 18th book of poetry, internationally acclaimed Canadian poet Stephen Bett is back to working the sassy, edgy margins of social satire. Divided into four sections, this book opens with humor; turns to soft- edge and then to hard-edge, wicked, hilarious satire of our vapid monoculture; and concludes with a section of poems bringing in the angst of it all.
Praise for THOSE GODAWFUL STREETS OF A MAN: A BOOK OF RAW WIRE IN THE CITY (BlazeVOX books, 2014):
I love what Stephen Bett is doing with language in his latest opus... Bett's his own man here. He's absorbed the lessons of the Objectivists, Beats, Black Mountain, New York and San Francisco schools; the Canadian Tish poets' experiments with vernacular phonological phrasing in open form; the studious avoidance of the 'burnished urn' Modernist reliance on myth, metaphor, and intellectual conceits, dense allusion, tight boxed containers.
Not that Bett's poems aren't marvelously allusive; the bric-a-brac of pop culture is all here: movies, cell phones, the Web, selfies, Tweets and all manner of squawks from the Interface. But there is nothing overtly confessional and the stitches and strophes are utterly comfortable and companionable...
This is minimalism for readers who like their poems fat: rich, but sans impasto or ornament. A book of raw wire in the city: edgy, tense, sharp, angular, dangerous...
At the heart of the book.is the story of a dissolving relationship, the man too earnest and accepting; the woman raging and fading into madness. But nothing is cloying or mawkish or sentimental, or even confessional; instead we shift easily from a sort of Special Victims Unit episode of macro family skeleton news to deeply personal, eviscerating sorrow?with grace and elan.
Musically, rhythmically, the poet is adroit, fluid, as graceful as Sonny Rollins on a good day. You can feel those tight turns, drops, and ascents as you might on a carnival ride; Bett doesn't waste a word, but pastes you to the back of your vernacular cage. You are in for the ride.
Line for line, strophe for strophe, image for image, Stephen Bett's latest delivers the news, along with the tart taste of jazz and blues.--Richard Stevenson, Pacific Rim Review of Books
THOSE GODAWFUL STREETS OF MAN takes an unapologetic, unflinching look into the back alleys and poorly lit areas of the human condition... You will find a voice that is braver than many, and a view of the world that is beautiful in its starkness.--Stuart Gill, Front Porch Journal
