The Devil’s Bookshop: (Salt Modern Poets)

What does the Devil like to read? In the title poem of David Kennedy's new collection he delights in books that describe the ease with which people lose things, care about the wrong things, believe that caring about some things is unnecessary or that neglecting others is the right thing to do. The relationship between care and neglect and how we choose or choose not to apply them is a constant theme in "The Devil's Bookshop". It is a relationship that is at the heart of moving elegies that rehabilitate Gaetan Dugas, the man erroneously held responsible for spreading AIDS through America in the 1980s, and pay tribute to psychologist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross who fought against prevailing medical opinion to give terminal patients a voice in their own care. Care and neglect are also explored in a sequence about life in a marginalized village community; in poems that respond to the London bombings of 7/7 and the ensuing climate of paranoia and scrutiny; and in more meditative observations of light and old stones. The cumulative effect is a quiet but persuasive argument that it is by our acts of attention that we must be judged."The Devil's Bookshop" closes with a sequence in homage to John Cage whose work in words, music and performance exemplifies the challenges and rewards of paying attention to attention itself.

Table of Contents:
The Metamorphosis of Gaëtan Dugas The Bombs, July 2005 Calendar The Lost Room Winter Windows Near Death The Waters Three Postscripts Prospectus Rue Longue Kitchen Song Expressions of Eglise Saint Laurent Snake Folio: Two Scenes for Seven Speakers La Spagna Unstoppable Languages The Sounds La Charraira Longea From Brassac-les-Mines to Le Vieil Auzon Entry on Freedom The Devil’s Bookshop Entry on Nation Mr. Fox Entry on Noise Entry on Reading For Cage: Changes / Pages Epigraph Prelude How to Begin The Value of a Well What is the Sound Metallic Retiles / Fetlock Rebalance Radical Rest The Scale On Missing a Celebratory Lunch through Food Poisoning Something To Look At I Eat My Old Virtue Off the Coast of the Poem Paint, Sauce, Self We Speak Christmas Day Music Some Error in the Text Lie Thoughts Never Had Shadow Haunted Movement Elegy

About the Author :
David Kennedy was born in Leicester in 1959. He co-edited The New Poetry and is the author of New Relations: The Refashioning of British Poetry 1980-1994. He edited the magazine of innovative poetry and poetics The Paper from 2000 to 2004 and publishes widely on contemporary British and Irish poetry. His publications include three collections with Salt; The Dice Cup, translations of Max Jacob’s prose poems with Christopher Pilling; the collaboration Eight Excursions with Rupert Loydell; and monographs on Douglas Dunn, on elegy, and on ekphrasis in contemporary British poetry. David lives in Sheffield with his wife, the artist and poet Christine Kennedy.

Review :
Aids continues to test many aspects of society: medical care, of course, but much more broadly, civic responsibility and social relationships. The opening poem is an elegy to one of the first known casualties, Gaetan Dugas, who died in 1984 in his early thirties. Dugas was traduced as 'Patient Zero' which, as Kennedy says, maligned him as "a hole, a dirty sink, a poisoned outlet". Here his humanity is recovered in an image, paradoxically, of a commemorative tree planted against one council's express wishes. In dignified defiance it "survives... untended" and stands "exchanging earth and heavens". The delicate charge of this is characteristic of a book that meditates on a pleasingly varied range of modern-day subjects, from the London bombings to the composer John Cage. ...this book, with its use of John Cage’s mesostic form and its slightly dislocated use of both form and free verse, as well as prose, can be said to be a bridge between mainstream and non-mainstream. Anyone who’s interested in enjoyable challenges should cross this bridge immediately: there is a playfulness and a seriousness to these poems that is lovely. He’s difficult to quote from in a review: his poems are made of whole cloth; and they are full of interesting directions, make you think as well as smile, or sometimes feel melancholy. This one’s a keeper. David Kennedy treats words as objects, sculpture. His mind has the mobility and dexterity of a pair of hands, and in this fine book Kennedy with the eye almost of a philosopher questions not just how language comes about but why.