Unwinding Alphabets: A Book of Citations

By Donald Wellman

I've read UNWINDING ALPHABETS: A BOOK OF CITATIONS and I think it is thrilling work. The methodology is superb but more than that these poems sing, vibrating along lyric strings of colloquy and antiphony. You've done something really fine here.--Patrick Pritchett

Reading inspires writing. These poems employ stratospheric levels of quotation, imitation, and allusion so as to create a serial poem or indeed serial poems within a serial poem. The first series, The Generosity of the Deadis a close reading of the works of Lisa Robertson. Citations from her works supply the fabric for this series. Other poets are cited for the sake of the argument. The second series, Alphabet Poems, works with a letter or letters of the alphabet derived from the first names of a range of chosen poets. The selected allusions are often a product of whim. The result is not. Among the short sequences and individual poems that comprise the remainder of the work are two hybrid poems, one indebted to H?lderlin and the second based on the work of Ingeborg Bachmann, a poet who felt disabled by the horrors of life after World War II.

CITATIONS, at least as Don Wellman does them, are acts of ritual remembrance, the poet gathers the living and the dead through a discrete bibliomancy. Wellman gathers up his own life as well, through invoking the lives of others. All called into the fulfillment of the present by the spell of letters. These poems, thoughtful, moving, vivid, and musical, draw poetry from its deepest sources. They fill the air around the reading of them with personal warmth.--Joseph Donahue

Poetry. Poetics.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1953252648
• ISBN13: 9781953252647
• Release Date: September 2022
• Publisher: DOS Madres Press
• Length: 110 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.9" x 9.0"