Daniel Borzutzky's books and chapbooks include, among others, IN THE MURMURS OF THE ROTTEN CARCASS ECONOMY (Nightboat Books, 2015), Bedtime Stories for the End of the World! (Bloof Books, 2015), Data Bodies (2013), THE BOOK OF INTERFERING BODIES (Nightboat Books, 2011), and THE ECSTASY OF CAPITULATION (BlazeVOX [books], 2006). He has translated Raúl Zurita's THE COUNTRY OF PLANKS (Action Books, 2015) and SONG FOR HIS DISAPPEARED LOVE (Action Books, 2010), and Jaime Luis Huenún's PORT TRAKL (Action Books, 2008). His work has been supported by the Illinois Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pen/Heim Translation Fund. He lives in Chicago.
Borzutzky is aware that 'creative consultants waiting to turn this
misery into poetry' are always waiting in the wings. This is in
keeping with the broader Orwellian inversions and distracting
gimcracks of the late capitalist police state he describes, where
we sext and Skype and surf the experiences of others far away as
authorities instruct us when to laugh and when to applaud. The
dystopia here results from the very juxtaposition that is the hope
of those migrants dying of thirst in the desert: a world of lack
versus a world of absurdly overflowing plenty; a world numb-drunk
on accumulated resources versus a world heightened in awareness by
its own starvation. But that already romanticizes and reduced;
Borzutzky is too clever, in any case, to speak for those who
lack.--decomP
Borzutzky's poetry is part Orwellian nightmare and part politicized
call to arms regarding the very real state of the world. The bodies
in his collection are bordered. They are have been conquered and
militarized. They have been dumped into gulags to
fester...Borzutzky manages to instill a hope in his readers that
although we remain trapped in our putrid and failing bodies, we,
too, will succeed in our spiritual mission to persevere.--American
Microreviews & Interviews
Daniel Borzutzky makes writing about bureaucratic nation-states
interesting. We, as the reader, observe communities utterly
destroyed, and we are left to question why and how and why and how
humans let this happen. In particular, the bay of Valparaiso merges
into the western shore of Lake Michigan, which exemplifies the
horrors that happen on American soil and international soil
alike--and how they are connected--and drawing the lines between
the personal and political poignantly. This is a collection not to
miss.--Luna Luna
The book, with its unflinching look at our corporatized lives and
its condemning critique of the poet's role in it, makes a serious
charge. We can choose for ourselves how to answer--but we each must
answer.--Center for Literary Publishing
What I loved best was the volume's secret insistence that we should
not think of it as a typical book of discrete poems, presented in
that all-too-familiar scroll show of a poet's various secretions,
pressed down onto a series of microscope slides. No, there is
something more, some controlling arc or vision.--The Brooklyn Rail
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