Sum: A Lyric Parody

Joseph Randolph
Poetry
200 pgs.
2021
Hardcover

SUM is a collagist long poem in the lineage of Zukofsky, assembling the pre–World War II American canon into a continuous field where lyric, philosophy, song, and detritus unfold simultaneously. Everything happens at once, all the time. Pound’s invocation runs directly into catalog, chant, joke, technical prose, and verse without tonal reset or hierarchy, while even the philosophical passages that attempt to stabilize language are absorbed back into the same ongoing sequence. Authorship gives way to the line. Love, grief, memory, and devotion remain present, without distinction or protection.