Honestly

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By (author): Steven Zultanksi

The third book in a trilogy that explores the limits of individual expression, Honestly is an intimate, quiet, and unresolved little book about talking and listening.

It begins with research into a forgotten relative who was kicked out of the author’s family after he was jailed for conscientious objection to WWII, and who then moved to New York to become a composer. From there the poem swerves into a series of minor-key personal anecdotes, interlaced with conversations with friends about work and relationships. Throughout, communication is framed by the economics and psychology of the home. Dialogue takes place in close quarters—constrained by money, space, ego, and empathy.

AUTHOR

Steven Zultanksi

STEVEN ZULTANSKI is the author of five books of poetry, most recently On the Literary Means of Representing the Powerful as Powerless (2017) and Bribery (2014). His critical writing has appeared in 4 Columns, Art in America, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Mousee, and elsewhere. In January 2017, an art exhibition inspired by his book Agony (published by BookThug in 2012) entitled You can tell I’m alive and well because I weep continuously was shown at the Knockdown Center in Queens. Steven divides his time between New York and Copenhagen.

Reviews

“Steven Zultanski is a great raconteur. In Honestly, he loquaciously monologues about everything from municipal corruption to asparagus horticulture with charm and authority. But this prose-like poem isn’t merely a filibuster. As it unfolds, Honestly spirals closer and closer to the silence behind speech.” –Chris Kraus