Oxo

Poetry. Translated from the French by Cole Swensen. The word "oxo" means, literally, "a bouillon cube," and this book of fine, spare poetry becomes a conceptual cube-- seven sections of seven poems, with each poem composed of seven lines of seven syllables. At the same time, the inclusion of Suzzan Doppelt's seven photographs render it a kind of "flip-book" of verbal and visual snapshots of life in contemporary Paris: its tourists, its homeless, its politicians, its TV news, its...
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Poetry. Translated from the French by Cole Swensen. The word "oxo" means, literally, "a bouillon cube," and this book of fine, spare poetry becomes a conceptual cube-- seven sections of seven poems, with each poem composed of seven lines of seven syllables. At the same time, the inclusion of Suzzan Doppelt's seven photographs render it a kind of "flip-book" of verbal and visual snapshots of life in contemporary Paris: its tourists, its homeless, its politicians, its TV news, its pigeons, and its poetry. "studied or not the gesture/ with which she laces up her/ naked back and calves baked on/ the beach evokes the damsel/ victim across the railroad/ tracks of thes silent slap with/ a stick on the ass slapstick"-- from `vacationer.'