About the Book
The Worry of the Far Right
The Reverend Donald Wildmon, executive director
Of the American Family Association in Tupelo,
Mississippi, birthplace of Elvis Presley, he who
Unleashed the libido of a generation, announced today
That he, the Reverend, wanted again an America
In which he could drive his convertible into town,
Park it, leave his keys in the ignition,
And worry only that it might rain,
Rather than worry about Liam Rector.
America--you are on notice. Liam Rector has little patience for "sincere" poetry, spin-doctored politicos, or moral hot air of any kind. The titles of these poems could easily serve as their own warning labels: those with clinical depression or easily triggered violent tendencies should use with caution.
The Executive Director of the Fallen World is fearless and forthright, just the sort of blunt reality check that is missing from so much of contemporary, over-stylized poetry. Rector's stoicism and slightly murderous sense of humor pervade these poems as he doffs his hat to humility and audacity, taking on America, money, movement, marriages, and general cultural mayhem. The characters and voices in Rector's poems are, by tragic turns, unflinching, clearly and cleanly bitter, sarcastically East Coast, and lyrical. Writing in tercets throughout, the poet breathes new life into this classic form with skill that might just send some unsuspecting readers over the edge.
As the former executive director of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs and a spirited First Amendment advocate who has sparred on screen with Bill O'Reilly, Liam Rector knows whereof he speaks in The Executive Director of the Fallen World.
About the Author :
Liam Rector is founder and director of the graduate Writing Seminars at Bennington College.
Review :
"[Rector's] third book in 20 years is mature and confident almost to the point of swaggering. In sometimes prose-like, sometimes musical tercets, Rector spits bile at a culture in decline . . . . There are a number of standouts, especially 'Now, ' in which an entire life is cynically, but movingly, compressed into just over four pages: '... a few years/ To play around while being/ Bossed around.' The reward is hard-nosed humility and gratitude after surviving failed marriages and nearly terminal cancer, which 'gave this to me: being/ Able to sit, comfortably.'"-- "Publishers Weekly" (8/28/2006 12:00:00 AM)
"Defiant to the last, mordantly funny, humane, and loving."--Ned Balbo "Antioch Review"
"Poet, educator, and founding director of Bennington College's Graduate Writing Seminars, Liam Rector died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound last August. In recent years, Rector had been successfully treated for colon cancer and heart disease, and many noted his preoccupation with the theme of surviving illness and facing down death in The Executive Director of the Fallen World, his last and finest poetry collection. Whatever the mysteries surrounding Rector's suicide, the book is full of fallen, disillusioned personae, many of them confronting terminal illness and death, and all of them easy to identify with the poet himself. But Rector's hard-won insight and incandescent gallows humor lighten the way, intermixing pathos with practical wisdom, tragedy with relentless sass. Often his mordant irony and slang diction prove to be his best defenses against despair, as in "So We'll Go No More," which presents a dying speaker's valediction to his lover: "Cancer, heart attack, bypass--all // In the same year? My chances / Are 20%! And I'm fucking well / Ready, ready to go." --Robert Schnall, Boston Review
--Robert Schnall "Boston Review" (1/1/2008 12:00:00 AM)
"Liam Rector's new book, The Executive Director of the Fallen World, expresses a stringent yet generous tone toward the profane, ignoble world of his title. Without necessarily forgiving himself or the rest of greedy and needy humanity, Rector chooses instead a dry, somewhat charitable acknowledgment that the world is . . . worldly."--Robert Pinsky "Washington Post" (10/22/2006 12:00:00 AM)
