cover image Mediated

Mediated

Carol Mirakove, . . Factory School, $12 (96pp) ISBN 978-1-60001-049-1

In four serial poems, Mirakove (Occupied ) offers a singular and very beautiful take on the ways an individual can and can not process the globalized, supermediated world. Doing so involves working through a lot of borrowed text ("my friend Rob says appropriation just –is-") and a rage at "an underestimation/ of what I might love." The title poem looks "between files & a click" and finds us "inadequately humbled/ taken/ to freefall." The second piece concerns the Los Angeles of 1999–2001, the period when "the Feds took over the LAPD three days after the LAPD took over Compton's police department." "Propaganda" looks, tongue-somewhat-in-cheek, for ways to "calculate/ evaluate/ figure/ amplify the pounding themes." The final section has handwritten comments and annotations in palimpsest across its printed lines, so that the poem's voices rub up against one another uneasily, closing a book that mixes stridency with lyrical self-questioning. (Dec.)