The Siege of the Body and a Brief Respite: (Salt Modern Poets)

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.

Table of Contents:
Part I. The Siege of the Body and a Brief Respite (I) 1. The Siege of the Body 2. And a Brief Respite Portrait Peeping Tom’s Closing Argument on Why the Woman in the Third Floor Window Should Stop Dancing Naked around Her Room and Just Hold Her Hairbrush and Look at the Moon Long Day’s Journey into Night Ars Poetica Abandoned Director’s Cut (1) Soap Opera 1. Cassey to Samantha 2. David to Cassey 3. Samantha to Sue 4. John to Whit 5. Rob to Wilson 6. Sue to Rob 7. Whit to David 8. Helen to David 9. Wilson to Rob 10. Sue to Samantha 11. Epilogue : Samantha to Helen The Interrupting One Night Only : My Love Sings the Blues at the Chukker Club Another Game of Chess How Long Will this Game Last, or Should I Ask How Deep ? Fixing Fences, Following the Hunt Variations Part II. Dialogues Storming the Beaches Ambushing the Houseatonic The Wedding Director’s Cut (2) Drama : Galway The Changing of the Light Bulb Imagine a Caste System Steve Was Caught Red-Handed Weighing and Selling Bananas by the Pound The Headless Cyclist Wins the Tour de France The Office Monologues 1. The Mannequin 2. The Transparent Raincoat 3. The Task 4. Lunch 5. In Case of Fire 6. The Lingering Hours of Early Afternoon 7. X, Y and Zed 8. Quitting Time The Messenger Invigilating Students Homecoming The Doctor’s Child and the Doctor As We Approached the Summit The Correspondence X-Poem The Yelping Hound Howling at Her Lord Part III. The Poet’s Introduction to Another Poet’s Reading 1. The ones who are better or different he has to hate because they are better or different – 2. And those who are worse he despises because that is his earned right – 3. Or, if they’re worse and successful, he hates them twice, twenty, fifty times as much for their success that indicts the taste of the public – The Siege of the Body and a Brief Respite (II) 1. The Siege of the Body 2. And a Brief Respite At Thy Rebuke They Fled Andy, My Friend the Businessman August Sestina : The Minister of Sound Director’s Cut (3) Faith The Man with Wings The Politic Heart In Ireland, after the Legalization of Divorce Part IV. Collaborations Collaboration : Cleaning up the Park Collaboration : The Art Thief Collaboration : On Hearing She Taught Her Younger Brother to Kiss Collaboration : A Day at the Beach Collaboration : Why the Birds Came Collaboration : Director’s Cut (4) Collaboration : Film Noir Collaboration : Between Countries Collaboration : The Election Collaboration : In a Time of Terror Collaboration : The Satisfactioners Collaboration : The Woman Who Can’t Dance and the Man Who Thinks He Can 1. Smoke rose from the dance floor 2. Outside the door, he waits for her to collect their coats 3. On their walk home, he uses the woman who can’t dance like a crutch 4. Stopping their goodnight kiss, she gets angry Collaboration : The Wall Collaboration : Pastoral on Fire Collaboration : Migration Patterns Part V. Ciara Can’t Dance After the Word Love Was Spoken Epithalymion Love, I Have Slept in that House Study : Sunday Morning after Their First Saturday Night Role Playing with Ciara Your Mama’s Boy and Her Daddy’s Girl Epithalymion Love Thy Faye Director’s Cut (5) The Madam in Her Chateau and the Cuckold Who Camps in Her Front Garden Church Full of Objections The Siege of the Body and a Brief Respite

About the Author :
Anthony Caleshu is the author of two books of poetry and a novella His poems and stories have appeared widely in journals and newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, including Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Dublin Review, American Literary Review, and Agni Online. He is the editor of the literary journal Short FICTION and teaches at the University of Plymouth in South West England.

Review :
Title aside, Siege is less concerned with the life of the body than of the mind. Sex and the siren-call of pleasure are explored in a subset of poems (including the deft “Pornography: Director’s Cut” which alternates in tone between clinical and ecstatic), but the real energy lies in Caleshu’s riffs. When Caleshu takes a snippet of source material and lets the mind fly, his results are always arresting, occasionally spectacular. "You do not start out as an art thief. You turn to art/ because it is worth more than banks..." Anthony Caleshu's thematically surprising, daring debut is full of this kind of cool-headed reasoning, warped practicality and consummate creepiness.... Unsentimental, pervasively witty and ostensibly anti-poetic, the voices that populate this collection stand on the shoulders of recognisably American giants... Intelligent, imaginative, and mercilessly witty, The Siege of the Body and a Brief Respite is a rewarding and extraordinary debut. It is a book with an overall design into which stand-alone poems have been fitted. It is both an unconventional book with alternating sections "The Siege of the Body", "A Brief Respite", and a conventional one of poems written as necessity and inspiration demanded. Caleshu wants it both ways, which is a risk worth taking. Caleshu contributes a drastically detached voice at odds with the formal conservatism of much Irish verse, past and present. His place in the anthology floats the notion that real aesthetic change is, if not imported, then washed ashore.'