From the Author's Private Collection
Eric Amling
From the Author's Private Collection is a kind of hymnal—a songbook of praise and confession to our culture's achingly contemporary aesthetics—the "[t]emporarily obtainable / esoteric things" currently available to us and our resulting ways of being. Whether reveling in the moments of transcendence they afford or throwing himself at the feet of their "humid decadence," Amling relentlessly catalogues these objects and gestures. "Guess who's on an airplane," he brags. Maybe he's headed somewhere like Miami or Vegas, or maybe it's just the first time he's used the in-flight Wi-Fi to send a text from 40,000 feet. In any case, it is a celebration of what Amling calls "private ambition." And even if that celebration is ironic, it eventually turns to shame, or more specifically, a "[m]odesty…born out of a sense of shame." From the Author's Private Collection is the record Amling keeps of us "using trinkets to outwit evil" so that we may "die the right way."
From the Author’s Private Collection + Collage
Get the book and one of two limited edition Eric Amling collages for $70
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What People Are Saying
John Ashbery
"Poetry, like cat urine, can ruin the integrity of a room," writes Eric Amling, but "it can also be a stealthy dominatrix." It is and does both in these startled, subversive poems, which churn up a disordered glee. But it's reassuring to know that "All of these works will be filed in a custom matrix/ Approved by third-tier analysts/ In a hall of dueling national anthems.
Inside the Book
- Category:
- Poetry
- Binding:
- Perfect Bound
- Dimensions
- 6" x 9"
- Publication Date:
- July 7, 2015
- ISBN:
- 978-0-9914298-3-7
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Reviews
- Staff
- Byron Coley and Thurston Moore
From the Book
from LIQUID ASSETS
Success, today, is the progressive realization of an ideal within a bubble.
I want to go to the biennial anyway.
We exist in postures.
We don't need an intensive course in anatomy
to lay our hands on another human being.
Touch your partner while you read this.
All of us sufficient actors with zero nostalgia.
And this is the mirror we've looked for.
A gnarled buddy system to analyze our sentient world.
Poised, chill, and alone.
But oh that ass, honey.