National Gallery

By (author): Jonathan Ball

A poetic collage of art in the modern world: from Rilkean elegies for an iPhone to a meditation on Melville’s classic
Jonathan Ball’s fourth poetry book, the first in seven years, swirls chaos and confession together. At the book’s heart is a question: Why create art? A series of poetic sequences torment themselves over this question, offering few answers and taking fewer prisoners. Loose sonnets that consider the artistic creations of Leatherface, monster-killer from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, sit alongside Rilkean elegies for an iPhone. Surreal meditations on the collage work of Guy Maddin are followed by all of the lines from Melville’s Moby-Dick that mention “salt.” Politicians and painters jostle while absurdist humour crashes into stark admissions of vulnerability in the wake of having children. A startling diversity of styles and subjects feed into the maelstrom of The National Gallery, and its dark currents will draw you in to drown.

AUTHOR

Jonathan Ball

Jonathan Ball teaches English, film and writing at universities in Winnipeg. He is the author of Ex Machina and Clockfire, which was shortlisted for a Manitoba Book Award. Ex Machina considers the relationship between humans, books and machines, and Clockfire contains 77 plays that would be impossible to produces. Both books were published under Creative Commons licenses, so you can remix their contents. Ball was also shortlisted for the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba writer. Visit www.jonathanball.com.

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Details

Dimensions:

128 Pages

0.39lb0.46in5.0in * 8.0in

Published:

September 10, 2019

Publisher:

Coach House Books

ISBN:

9781552453971

Book Subjects:

POETRY / Canadian

Featured In:

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Language:

01

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