cover image War, the Musical

War, the Musical

Dirk Rowntree, Rob Fitterman, . . Subpress, $15 (400pp) ISBN 978-1-930068-33-9

Combining the cut-and-paste graphic art and radical typesetting of artist Rowntree with texts that poet Fitterman (Metropolis ) has found, altered and composed, this hybrid work orchestrates a multiplicity of voices singing out against an ever changing backdrop. The result is a book that harmonizes the contradictions between lines like "all you can/ think about is there's/ someone out there// trying to kill you or/ your buddy" and "Hunter satisfaction is of the utmost importance to us." Rowntree offers up a profusion of incongruous yet moving scenes and figures. The text reads like spliced Internet chatter presented with strategic orthographic alterations. As elements repeat, they produce the disorienting sense of a business-as-usual homefront ("1 made the cheerleading squad 6ecause 1 yelled the cheer as loud as 1 could") obliterating a real war with a mouse click. (Dec.)