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The President of Planet Earth
$15.95
In a state of apocalyptic rapture, Russian futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov pronounced himself the “president of planet earth.” In this, David Wheatley’s fifth collection but the first to be published in North America, he brings an experimental sensibility to bear on questions of land and territory, channeling the messianic ambitions of modernism into rich and subversive comedy. Long sequences explore the other country that is childhood, Khlebnikov’s Russia, and the Scottish landscapes where the poet now makes his home. History, translation, and animal life are constant presences. The President of Planet Earth aspires to a transformative poetics, refashioning language and the world it helps us shape.
Shortlisted for The Irish Times Poetry Now Award
Praise
“In its thrift, The President of Planet Earth often resembles the work of George Oppen or Francis Ponge; its attention to specifics is unflinching. Word by word, the texture of a vista or situation is brought into brutal focus. And these are poems unable to live off a single set of roots; they continually open up to new ways of scrutinizing an environment of which we are both analysts and integral parts.”
– Cal Revely-Calder, The Times Literary Supplement
“Learned but never dry, always witty and surprising, Wheatley scampers through the arts, music, painting and history in this big bazaar of a book but scatters bitterness along the way. … The acid taste of Wheatley’s poems is sweetened by the variousness of their humour and forms.”
– Claire Crowther, Poetry London
“Wheatley’s is a poetry of displacement, uncertainty and sheer possibility, jumping from place to place, idea to idea, the real to the imagined…”
– Ben Wilkinson, The Guardian
“One of Wheatley’s main tools is a sardonic and devastating wit, which he turns on the parochial wherever it is encountered.”
– W. N. Herbert, Poetry London Review
Description
In a state of apocalyptic rapture, Russian futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov pronounced himself the “president of planet earth.” In this, David Wheatley’s fifth collection but the first to be published in North America, he brings an experimental sensibility to bear on questions of land and territory, channeling the messianic ambitions of modernism into rich and subversive comedy. Long sequences explore the other country that is childhood, Khlebnikov’s Russia, and the Scottish landscapes where the poet now makes his home. History, translation, and animal life are constant presences. The President of Planet Earth aspires to a transformative poetics, refashioning language and the world it helps us shape.
Shortlisted for The Irish Times Poetry Now Award
Praise
“In its thrift, The President of Planet Earth often resembles the work of George Oppen or Francis Ponge; its attention to specifics is unflinching. Word by word, the texture of a vista or situation is brought into brutal focus. And these are poems unable to live off a single set of roots; they continually open up to new ways of scrutinizing an environment of which we are both analysts and integral parts.”
– Cal Revely-Calder, The Times Literary Supplement
“Learned but never dry, always witty and surprising, Wheatley scampers through the arts, music, painting and history in this big bazaar of a book but scatters bitterness along the way. … The acid taste of Wheatley’s poems is sweetened by the variousness of their humour and forms.”
– Claire Crowther, Poetry London
“Wheatley’s is a poetry of displacement, uncertainty and sheer possibility, jumping from place to place, idea to idea, the real to the imagined…”
– Ben Wilkinson, The Guardian
“One of Wheatley’s main tools is a sardonic and devastating wit, which he turns on the parochial wherever it is encountered.”
– W. N. Herbert, Poetry London Review
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