Blackout

Translated into English for the first time, this 1980 homage to "persecuted comrades" from revolutionary Italian writer and artist Balestrini (We Want Everything) recalls an epoch of upheaval that is keenly pertinent to new waves of anticapitalist and antifascist revolt in the 21st century. Known for his recombinatory text experiments, Balestrini here employs a technique in which he snatches lines from selected texts and arranges them as "a patchwork quilt with strips sewed at 45%C2%B0 angles across a checkered base." The result is an incantatory song of urgency and restlessness, a curation of already-penned words that's both formally inventive and surprisingly simple. Balestrini steals from many sources%E2%80%94a Mont Blanc tourist guide, newspaper articles, personal letters%E2%80%94and melds the 1977 crushing of Italy's revolutionary autonomia operaia movement with New York's infamous 1977 blackout. Though tied to historic moments, Balestrini's work evades specificity and harnesses a transcendent voice of rebellion. Instead of one man insisting that his own voice speak for the people, the book makes room for the disaffected cries of the many. One repeating line hums that "a new concept is emerging it is the concept of direct counterpower," though, of course, the concept was not new then and isn't now. And yet, with nothing new%E2%80%94not even his own words%E2%80%94Balestrini evokes the timelessness of the people's rage against oppression. (May)