How do we react to disaster, to political uprising, to spectacle? With relief missions, donations, and what words? While You Were Approaching the Spectacle But Before You Were Transformed by It, the second book by Lytton Smith, explores the relationship between poetry, news, and the lives of others. Poised between Brechts critique of empathy and Martha Nussbaums politics of compassion, this powerful collection plays with direct address and personal testimony as it investigates the relationship between ethics and the aesthetic. Drawing on sources that range from travel guides, BBC reports, contemporary art exhibitions, and sixteenth-century debates about masque, Smiths book offers a range of forms that test the edges of the page, the borders of communication.
A riveting second collection from a poet already in his prime (Boston Review)
Travel Narrative Of the Kingdom Which Counterweights Civilization
Friendship as a Rhetoric of Retreating Past Borders Begins the Civil War
A Turned Page as the Measure of Suspense By means of a mountain path or a
merchant new-arrived or a fragmented map in a pawnbrokers: new travels,
tells of a country through which goods might be easily moved International
Natural Resources First of the Invasions Encounter with Elephants The
Spectacle (I) Some Corner of a Foreign Field Trade Winds, Trade Routes
Civil War Summer in the Delta Refraction Civil War (Forgotten) Native
Characteristics Approved Bringing Violins, Games, and Bibles to Coastal
Areas The Spectacle (II) River Insurgence Barefoot Across the Floor of
the Pagoda If by Rudyard Kipling Independence Day General H - Flees
the Abode of Kings Patriotism Does Not Doubt for National Joy Civil War
The Spectacle (III) Moonlight at the Pagoda The Spectacle (IV) Silk
First Reaches the Citys Markets Sweet and Fitting Telescopic
Philanthropy Public Sites Are For Gatherings (Of Less Than Five) House
Arrest Refugee Blues In the International News Headlines Civil War as
the Longest Uninterrupted in World History (Forgotten) Monsoon Deluge As
[ They] Lay Dying On Empathy The Spectacle (V) International Disaster
Relief Fund Civil War Resettling the Capital City The Spectacle (VI)
As the Teak Forests Move We Are Here To Protect Even By Necessary
Imposition Where Were You In This? By means of a military state and the
governmental control of goods, carbon resources, travel visas, food, and
labour; in the wake of historical occupations by and upon the national
construct; through the resituation of villagers, villages, and language;
offering momentary promises of alternative behavior; because it would be
wrong to tell authority that its policies have failed; hamstrung by sanctions
(except those related to global concerns such as rare wood, oil, pipelines,
etc; dismayed by the mis-perception of people-minded rule, we have reached
this stage of national happiness:
LYTTON SMITHs debut collection, The All-Purpose Magical Tent won the Nightboat Poetry Books Poetry Prize and was published in 2008. He lives and teaches teaches English and creative writing at Plymouth University.
