Description
Book Synopsis"Equi seems to know all our foibles and, instead of edging toward the door, reports the latest developments with precise, loving equanimity. Her voice is unique, poised, witty, intimate, and somehow interstellar. It's as if she's visiting from a future where we all appear transparent. Click and Clone is an electrified pleasure field."Aram Saroyan "Spick and span, cut and dry, shake and bake, and now Elaine Equi introduces Click and Clone. These poetically altered texts punch holes into the multiverses of pop and splendor, short and longing, prose and dreams. Equi says that art can no longer imitate life, it just needs to keep up. As they might say at the racetrack, she leads by a verse."Charles Bernstein Click and Clone explores American life as it has been altered by our technological revolution. Elaine Equi's style is sophisticated, yet always accessible and truly democratic in approach. Whether she is writing about art, pop culture, consumerism, or reality TV, Equi does so with clarity and wit. specs . . . dots . . . bytes . . . atoms . . . scraps . . . snippets . . . tweets . . . Some are whole as seeds contain a whole galaxy of fruit and vegetable planets within them. Elaine Equi's last book Ripple Effect was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and on the short list for Canada's Griffin Poetry Prize. She lives in New York.
Trade Review“Whether celebrating clones or revising Led Zeppelin (`That stairway only leads half-way to heaven’), Equi melds verse with aphorism, wisdom with wicked playfulness.”—Entertainment Weekly "Elaine Equi's Click and Clone is poetry for the 21st century. . . .Her incisive wit and elegant nod at contemporary technology combine to create a poetry that is not only flamboyant but essential."—The Journal (West Virginia)< "Thinking and dreaming join forces in Elaine Equi’s poems, to create a voice that merges sharp intelligence with an artfully mined subconscious. Each poem produces a rush, a pleasurable detonation, a whoosh in the head, analogous to all the windows in a skyscraper being thrown or blown open.” —Drunken Boat “Elaine Equi is one who won’t stay `inside the line… or outside the line. // I am the line itself,’ she proclaims in the lead poem `Follow Me.’ In an age of instant and infinite communication marked by blips, beeps, and tweets, she continues to streamline her unique vision. . . . This troubling topic, seemingly alien to a poetic sensibility, is indicative of Equi’s reach into the future. She also keeps the past magically alive."—Brooklyn Rail “Equi’s newest collection is punchy and fast paced; saturated with an urban tang (`You Know the Type // A NY guy / in an NY hat / walking an NY dog’). Modern yet staunchly accessible in their quirkiness, her poems feel alive. `Nowhere is there a poet / who sings the sanitized decadence of our times,’ Equi writes, though one could argue that her collection comes as close as possible.” —Publishers Weekly “Equi’s name-dropping of fellow poets and friends, her use of various forms—from dialogue script to sonnet to one-line aphoristic phrase—gives this collection an energetic charm.”—American Poet “Elaine Equi is not a poet’s poet and not a people’s poet, and yet she is both. Her poetry is wry and sparse. Often less than a page, her poems read something like eloquent one-liners that along with laughter effortlessly provoke profundity: a little Wang Wei, a little Frank O’Hara, a little Nicanor Parra, but mostly, just a little.”—Guernica “Elaine Equi seems to know all our foibles and, instead of edging toward the door, reports the latest developments with precise, loving equanimity. Her voice is unique: poised, witty, intimate, and somehow interstellar. It’s as if she’s visiting from a future where we all appear transparent. Click and Clone is an electrified pleasure field.” —Aram Saroyan “Spick and span, cut and dry, shake and bake, and now Elaine Equi introduces Click and Clone. These poetically altered texts punch wholes into the multiverses of pop and splendor, short and longing, prose and dreams. Equi says that art can no longer imitate life, it just needs to keep up. As they might say at the racetrack, she leads by a verse.”—Charles Bernstein
