The Siege of the Body and a Brief Respite

This is Anthony Caleshu's first book of poems. Divided into five sections, themes range from the erotic to the religious in poems which are as inventive for their images as they are for their form. Concerns with language and contemporary culture are at the forefront of these poems, which are alternatively whimsical and seriously subversive. Straddling both the anecdotal narrative and the experimental lyric, these poems are at their most progressive in two sections of 'dialogues' and 'collaborations'. The dialogues make use of disembodied voices as each poem creates a definitive scene. The collaborations play on notions of otherness and integration as Caleshu collaborates with himself; bouncing language against langauge, like hitting a tennis ball against a garage door. This is a poetry that captures the fun of having serious implications. If American in language games and effects, it is international in subject and wit.