In this Book
- Exit Theater
- Book
- 2016
- Published by: University Press of Colorado
- Series: Con[text]ual
summary
Published by the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University
Winner of the 2016 Colorado Prize for Poetry
Selected by Tyrone Williams for the 2016 Colorado Prize for Poetry, Exit Theater casts classical elegy, with dazzling formal innovation, into a staggering work of contemporary, political polyphony. Through monologues, performance scripts, and poems of exquisite prosody, Mike Lala examines the human figure—as subject and object, enemy and ally—in the context of a progressively defigured and hostile world. Catullus, Shakespeare, Cy Twombly, and Lydia Delectorskaya echo across engagements with Israeli generals, accused terrorists, State Department employees, nuclear scientists, Saturday Night Live actors, war criminals, malware, and a host of mythic, literary, and half-extant spectral characters. Amid the cacophony, Lala implicates every actor, including himself, in a web of shared culpability vis-à-vis consumerism, representation, speaking, writing, and making art against the backdrop of the endless, open wars of a post–Cold War, post-2001 era. Exit Theater is a debut of and against its time—a book about war, art, and what it means to make art in a time of war.
Winner of the 2016 Colorado Prize for Poetry
Selected by Tyrone Williams for the 2016 Colorado Prize for Poetry, Exit Theater casts classical elegy, with dazzling formal innovation, into a staggering work of contemporary, political polyphony. Through monologues, performance scripts, and poems of exquisite prosody, Mike Lala examines the human figure—as subject and object, enemy and ally—in the context of a progressively defigured and hostile world. Catullus, Shakespeare, Cy Twombly, and Lydia Delectorskaya echo across engagements with Israeli generals, accused terrorists, State Department employees, nuclear scientists, Saturday Night Live actors, war criminals, malware, and a host of mythic, literary, and half-extant spectral characters. Amid the cacophony, Lala implicates every actor, including himself, in a web of shared culpability vis-à-vis consumerism, representation, speaking, writing, and making art against the backdrop of the endless, open wars of a post–Cold War, post-2001 era. Exit Theater is a debut of and against its time—a book about war, art, and what it means to make art in a time of war.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Say Goodbye to the Shores (Catullus 101)
- pp. vii-viii
- Say to the Shores
- In the Gun Cabinet
- [there’s a violence]
- p. 29
- [as it emptied]
- p. 30
- [nocturne]
- p. 31
- [a closet]
- pp. 32-33
- [on the mantle]
- p. 34
- [the bodies you inhabit‘
- pp. 36-37
- [two playgrounds]
- pp. 40-42
- [in the hospitality of war]
- pp. 43-50
- Exit Theater
- See: Enemy
- p. 60
- Twenty-Four Exits (A Closet Drama)
- pp. 65-68
- Self_Interrogation (Kill Team)
- pp. 70-80
- Notes & Acknowledgements
- pp. 81-84
Additional Information
ISBN
9781885635549
Related ISBN(s)
9781885635532
MARC Record
OCLC
954424467
Pages
96
Launched on MUSE
2016-12-06
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
2016