Our Prediction

An intimate archive emptied and overwritten by a fear of words, a book of mingled fates

The poems of Our Prediction are lifted from a folder of sketchy reports recalling the strange neutral-ity of the ancient chorus. And this intimate archive exposes a fear of language concealed at the root of poetry, delivering a book in which doubt, shame, and dread overtake poetry’s stereotypical love affair with words, a book that crosses over into the exclusion zone of stupidity and never returns.

Breeding and scavenging without scruple or restraint, the ＂bare life＂ of these unauthorized poems invariably confuses reading and writing. Listening becomes the business of speaking, of saying we but not asking who. And in its crooked way, the crooked text may begin to sound like a campfire oath of senseless plots and garbled refrains. For the listener soon will be surrounded by an accident of voices--a cassandrian short cut--exposing the particulars of not-yet-being.

DANIEL TIFFANY is the author of collections of poetry from presses including Wesleyan, Action Books, Noemi, Tinfish, Parlor Press, and Omnidawn, His poems have been published in many journals, including Poetry, Boston Review, Brooklyn Rail, Lana Turner, Bomb, andParis Review. In addition to his own writing, he has published translations of texts from French, Greek, and Italian. Tiffany is also the author of five volumes of academic criticism from presses including Harvard, Chicago, and Johns Hopkins. His entry on ＂Lyric Poetry and Poetics＂ can be found in the current edition of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Literature, and he is a recipient of the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin. www.danieltiffany.com