Tangible Purposes

Tangible Purposes is a book-length sequence of linked poetic texts that investigate the schisms and overlaps between the emotionally driven language of confessional, romantic, and meditative address, and the more brash and surgical language of so-called official documents, transcripts of expert testimony, journalism, and political rhetoric and speeches. Poetic investigation into these materials aims to complicate and multiply the limits of the subjects at hand, and new layers emerge that work to push these materials into a direction that speaks to the political complexities of verbal and written communication in a culture that has become over-saturated with it. Tangible Purposes mixes a variety of interdisciplinary materials in order to aggregate through the use of cut-up, paratactical, polyvocal, collage, and found-language techniques, which work to create unexpected literary affects whether sublime, banal, or shocking.