Andrew Joron

Andrew Joron Poems

Andrew Joron Biography

Born in San Antonio, poet Andrew Joron was raised in Germany, Massachusetts, and Montana. He earned a BA in the philosophy of science at the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied with anarchist philosopher Paul Feyerabend. Addressing the trajectory of his work in a 2010 interview with poetry blogger Christopher Nelson, Joron explained, "A fascination with sound, with syntax, and other properties of language defeated my earliest ambition, which was to become a science-fiction writer. I realized I was more interested in language as a speculative substance, and not as a platform for building plot and character." In a 2009 review of The Sound Mirror (2008) for Bookforum, critic Noah Eli Gordon observes that Joron has "managed to create poetry attuned to materialist critiques of language without abandoning any of the art’s mystery and metaphysical inquiry." Influenced by poet Gustaf Sobin and surrealist mystic Philip Lamantia, Joron composes experimental poems in a mode he calls "speculative lyric," steeped in science-fiction and surrealism and engaging the physical and sonic matter of language. Joron is the author of several collections of poetry, including Trance Archive: New and Selected Poems (2010), Fathom (2003), and Science Fiction (1992). Joron is also the author of The Cry at Zero: Selected Prose (2007) and Neo-Surrealism; Or, The Sun at Night: Transformations of Surrealism in American Poetry (2004). His poetry has also been included in the anthologies American Hybrid (2009) and Primary Trouble (1996). His translations from the German include surrealist Richard Anders' The Footsteps of One Who Has Not Stepped Forth (1999) and philosopher Ernst Bloch's Literary Essays (1998). Joron works as a freelance bibliographer and indexer, and plays the theremin as a member of the musical improvisational trio Free Rein. He lives in Berkeley. In April 2013, Joron was a featured writer for Harriet.)

The Best Poem Of Andrew Joron

Autoplastik

The orbiting reflector
Turns night into day: petals ping

Accelerated workers
swarm into the plaza
A blur on the soul's dead instrument

Everywhere, windows are blanked
To the same newsreel

I alone
Inhabit a mockup of the early nineteenth century

I, the great idealist
who confesses
On the first page of his diary: Father!
There are no living atoms

& the diary answers: Identity
Is that
Which is eaten from within

Another man is partially assembled
On the table

Another module
Unshrouded, revolves in sunlight

filtered through noise
A simulated victory

Crawls like a glove
Animated by music

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