The Blue Clerk

The Blue Clerk

Ars Poetica in 59 Versos

  • Author: Brand, Dionne
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • ISBN: 9781478000068
  • eISBN Pdf: 9781478002055
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2018
  • Month: August
  • Pages: 248
  • Language: English
On a lonely wharf a clerk in an ink-blue coat inspects bales and bales of paper that hold a poet’s accumulated left-hand pages—the unwritten, the withheld, the unexpressed, the withdrawn, the restrained, the word-shard. In The Blue Clerk renowned poet Dionne Brand stages a conversation and an argument between the poet and the Blue Clerk, who is the keeper of the poet’s pages. In their dialogues—which take shape as a series of haunting prose poems—the poet and the clerk invoke a host of writers, philosophers, and artists, from Jacob Lawrence, Lola Kiepja, and Walter Benjamin to John Coltrane, Josephine Turalba, and Jorge Luis Borges. Through these essay poems, Brand explores memory, language, culture, and time while intimately interrogating the act and difficulty of writing, the relationship between the poet and the world, and the link between author and art. Inviting the reader to engage with the resonant meanings of the withheld, Brand offers a profound and moving philosophy of writing and a wide-ranging analysis of the present world.
  • Cover
  • One
    • Stipule
    • Verso 1
    • Stipule
    • Verso 1.1.01
    • Verso 2
    • Verso 2.01
    • Verso 2.1
    • Verso 2.2
    • Verso 2.2.1
    • Verso 2.3
    • Verso 2.3.1
    • Verso 2.4
    • Verso 2.5
    • Verso 3
    • Verso 3.01
    • Verso 3.1
    • Verso 3.2
    • Verso 3.3
    • Verso 3.3.1
    • Verso 3.3.2
    • Verso 3.4
    • Verso 3.5
    • Verso 3.6
    • Verso 3.7
    • Verso 3.8
    • Verso 4
    • Verso 5
    • Verso 5.0.1
    • Verso 5.1
    • Verso 5.2
    • Verso 5.2.1
    • Verso 5.5
    • Verso 5.5.1
    • Verso 6
    • Verso 6.1
    • Verso 6.2
    • Verso 6.3
    • Verso 7
    • Verso 8
    • Verso 8.1
    • Verso 9
    • Verso 9.1
  • Two
    • Stipule
    • Verso 10.01
    • Verso 10.1
    • Verso 10.1.01
    • Verso 10.2
    • Verso 10.3
    • Verso 10.4
    • Verso 11
    • Verso 12
    • Verso 13
    • Verso 13.1
    • Verso 13.1.1
    • Verso 14
  • Three
    • Verso 15
    • Verso 15.1
    • Verso 15.2
    • Verso 16
    • Verso 16.1
    • Verso 16.2
    • Verso 16.2.1
    • Verso 16.3
    • Verso 16.4
    • Verso 16.5
    • Verso 16.6
    • Verso 16.7
    • Verso 16.8
    • Verso 17
    • Verso 18
    • Verso 18.1
    • Verso 18.2
    • Verso 18.3
    • Verso 18.4.1
    • Verso 18.4.2
    • Verso 18.4.3
    • Verso 19
    • Verso 19.001
    • Verso 19.01
    • Verso 19.1
    • Verso 19.2
    • Verso 20
    • Verso 20.01
    • Verso 20.02
    • Verso 20.1
    • Verso 20.2
    • Verso 21
    • Verso 21.1
    • Verso 21.2
    • Verso 21.3
    • Verso 21.3.1
    • Verso 21.4
    • Verso 21.5
    • Verso 21.6
    • Verso 22
    • Verso 0.1
    • Verso 0.1.2
    • Verso 23
    • Verso 24
    • Verso 24.1
    • Verso 24.2
    • Verso 24.3
    • Verso 25
    • Verso 25.1
    • Verso
    • Verso
    • Verso
    • Verso
    • Verso 26
    • Verso 27
  • Four
    • Verso 28
    • Verso 29
    • Verso 30
    • Verso 30.1
    • Verso 30.2
    • Verso 31
    • Verso 32
    • Verso 32.1
    • Verso 32.2
    • Verso 33
    • Verso 33.1
    • Verso
    • Verso
    • Verso
    • Verso 33.2
    • Verso 33.3
    • Verso 34
    • Verso 34.1
    • Verso 34.2
    • Verso 35
    • Verso 35.1
    • Verso 35.2
    • Verso 36
    • Verso 36.1
    • Verso 36.2
    • Verso 37
    • Verso 37.1
    • Verso 38
    • Verso 38.1
    • Verso 38.2
    • Verso 38.3
    • Verso 39
    • Verso 40
    • Verso 40.1.1
    • Verso 40.1.1
    • Verso 40.1.2
    • Verso 40.2
    • Verso 40.3
    • Verso 40.4
    • Verso 40.5
    • Verso 40.6
    • Verso 41
    • Verso 41.1
    • Verso 42
    • Verso 42.1
    • Verso 43
    • Verso 44
    • Verso 45
    • Verso 46
    • Verso 47
    • Verso 48
    • Verso 49
    • Verso 50
    • Verso 51
    • Verso 51.1
    • Verso 52
    • Verso 53
    • Verso 54
    • Verso 54.1
    • Verso 55
    • Verso 56
    • Verso 57
    • Verso 58
    • Verso 58.1
    • Verso 58.2
    • Verso 59
    • Verso 59.1
    • Verso 59.2
    • Index 1
    • Verso 33.1

Subjects

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