PQRS A Poets Theater Script - Softcover

Durgin, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0984647570 ISBN 13: 9780984647576

Publisher: Kenning Editions, 2013

Synopsis

Poetry. Drama. Literary Nonfiction. Cross-Genre. "It's one thing to advocate for writing that pushes boundaries, mixes discourses, and transgresses the dominant aesthetic, but it's quite another to actually write it. As a play, PQRS is not just unstageable, it is a monumental failure. That is, it fails with such clarity, indifference, legitimate anger, and abandon that it turns into a kind of monument, marking the point where the intellect's pessimism collapses into the will's optimism. The many models and forerunners for a project this radical include the posthumously published texts of Gertrude Stein, referred to explicitly here as 'the most exhaustive syllabic implosion in prose of any language.' But if Stein's implosion was horizontal, PQRS goes vertical, running up and down the scale of rhetorics: essay, drama, lists of potential performance art projects, lit crit, film crit, music history, autobiography, back to drama, intermission, critique of capital, URL of a Tumblr page of women laughing while holding salads, back to drama (and: scene). 'The text succeeds its own conditions.' In dire and unsuccessful times, that's the hope."—Brent Cunningham

About this title

About the Author

Patrick Durgin is coauthor of THE ROUTE (Atelos, 2008, with Jen Hofer) and has published numerous chapbooks, including Imitation Poems (2006) and Color Music (2002). Durgin is also editor of HANNAH WEINER'S OPEN HOUSE and The Early and Clairvoyant Journals of Hannah Weiner. He teaches critical theory, literature, and writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Edition details

• Publisher: Kenning Editions
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0984647570
• ISBN 13: 9780984647576
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 71