Antisocial Patience

Poetry. California Interest. Jewish Studies. Religious Studies. The 18 suites of poems that make up ANTISOCIAL PATIENCE are a kind of diary of days lived in the aftermath of political upheaval, when it's quiet. Solidarity's subsided, the torn-open world of possibilities has shut back down. But something's changed; the poet has found God. There are hymns and psalms and sonnets and syllabics here; canticles and macaronic verse, little ABAB stanzas and Oakland argot with a King James twist. They are sidewalk- poems, working-in-bookstore poems; restricted and devotional, utterly compact and wide-water open. What if Bartleby had had a giant heart? What if Hopkins had fought the cops? Throw your phone away, the poems suggest; cry out your name in the street. Your friends will find you anyway, and you'll remember that you're really here.--Chris Nealon