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Impastoral

Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Impastoral by Brandan Griffin is an innovative poetry collection that blurs the boundaries between language and species. The poems explore voices ranging from slugs and lab rats to bot flies and giant cows, crafting a unique language that transcends human and nonhuman distinctions. Each poem acts as a living organism, creating interconnected worlds that invite readers to experience existence from the perspective of various beings—whether sea vents, microprocessors, or translucent leaves. Griffin's work imagines new possibilities for being and becoming, encouraging a fresh vision of the world.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$3399
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

Impastoral is ideal for readers interested in experimental poetry, ecological and cultural studies, and those curious about the intersections of language, species, and identity. It will particularly appeal to fans of avant-garde literature and anyone open to immersive, boundary-defying poetic experiences.

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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Poems that blur the boundaries of language and species, inviting us to imagine a new world.

The expansive reworking of language in Impastoral flies through the possible voices of outsides and insides—slug, probe, horse carriage, sewer, potted plant, lab rat, vampire, bot fly, giant cow. Language, in Brandan Griffin’s poetry, is neither human nor nonhuman, and it undoes that very idea of these distinctions, so beings—slugprobe, pottedhorsesewer, telepathybarcode, mammaltexts—morph and change in between boundaries.

Each of these poems is an organism, a collection of living connections, looped interiorities strung together in worlds tunnelling through worlds. The poems’ composition becomes a decomposition of budding, breeding, and fluctuating. Reading this collection is an experience of becoming deformed and merged into the experiences of other beings; you are sea vent, microprocessor, cell gel, bug, a greenly translucent leaf typed half a sound at a time. Griffin invites us to imagine all possible beings and to hatch into a fresh world.

Impastoral won the Omnidawn Open Book contest, selected by Brian Teare.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Critics praise Impastoral for its radical reworking of English orthography, granting words a visual and psychic power that connects human and more-than-human experiences. The poems are described as both ecstatic and wrenching records of ecological and mystical interconnection, confronting the intertwined realities of sewage, violence, animals, and digital signals. This inventive idiolect unlocks new modes of knowing and insight, making the reader profoundly aware of the bindings of pleasure, wonder, and mortality in our world.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781632431028

Publisher: Omnidawn Publishing

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 10 June 2022

Country: United States

Imprint: Omnidawn Publishing

Audience: Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 8.0mm

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 228.0mm

Weight: 170g

Pages: 112

About the Author

Brandan Griffin was born in Massachusetts and now lives in Sunnyside, New York. He is the author of the chapbook Four Concretures, and his poems have been published in TagvverkChicago Review, and Word for/WordImpastoral is his first book.

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