In this, his first selected volume, the author of The Marginalization of Poetry delivers a stunning poetic portrait of late 20th-century America. This volume includes work from all of Perelman's previously published collections. His poetry often sacrifices heated affects for a sort of plain-spoken irony . . . Perelman deploys a choice set of tonal registers to great effect . . . He trusts his reader's ability to participate in the making of the work, to play among meanings rather than accept those that are imposed.
Most poets define poetry by creating it.
This is poetry as social text, a lyric at once deeply personal and yet directed outward, as a form of political critique. There are, however, comprehensive ones, the mind panoramically scanning a present where each detail exposes a struggle, contradictions, compromises, all glazed over in the latest colors. No one expresses these thoughts more richly or more acutely than Bob Perelman, whose work never lets the reader forget the difficulty within each decision even as it celebrates the possibility of decision making as the essence of ethical action. With a wit whose ancestry includes Catullus and Pope as well as Berrigan and Frank O'Hara, Perelman has emerged as our most sharply edged political poet. Among several stunning long works in Virtual Reality, 'The Marginalization of Poetry' explores some points of contact between criticism and its 'abject object,' poetry.