Andrew Zawacki, Petals of Zero Petals of One
ISBN: 978-1-58498-064-3, paper, $13.95
"Andrew Zawacki’s third book explores the dynamics of one and of none: being and nothingness, binary code, virtual flowers in a bulletproof vase, she loves me she loves me not. Inflected by an ecopoetics that lets the electro in, Petals of Zero Petals of One consists of three concatenated tracks, sequenced in a low-tech echo
chamber. Winner of the 1913 Prize, “Georgia” has been praised by Cole Swensen as a “vibrant disaster” that “keeps us feeling falling,” while Peter Gizzi calls it a “high velocity tour-de-force.” The central series, “Arrow’s shadow,” is a fractured ars poetica and an elegiac encounter with landscape and syllable, with pixelated forms and light. “Storm, lustral” choreographs an epileptic last dance along the ditch waters and wanderlust of the Dasein. This volume affirms Susan Howe’s claim that Zawacki “combines the disciplined perception of a naturalist with the inspired perception of a poet.”
"Andrew Zawacki is a poet of startling, exhilarating capacity… Zawacki’s vital talent is bewitching." —Harrison DeSales, Boston Review
"Zawacki leans into the uncanny, describes it exquisitely, and gives us a world that feels fully and personally engaged… He takes on the world and its pluralities with a generosity that is rare, beautiful, and convincing. —Malinda Markham, The Antioch Review
"His poems survey the topos of language even as they break from and are sometimes broken by it. They involve themselves in what Blanchot calls a “habitless inhabiting” of time and place. —Chad Davidson,Chicago Review
"Zawacki’s formalism renews the art of arabesque, a motif defined by 19th-century aestheticians as a perfect synthesis of enthusiasm and irony. [A] self-critical lyricism interlaces desire and detachment." —Andrew Joron, Rain Taxi
"Zawacki’s poems feel aesthetically and ethereally beyond the terrestrial, taking it into the land of language, or language into the land of the terrestrial so both dissolve and become phantasmagoric visitations. —Jennifer Dick, Jacket
"Andrew Zawacki’s third book explores the dynamics of one and of none: being and nothingness, binary code, virtual flowers in a bulletproof vase, she loves me she loves me not. Inflected by an ecopoetics that lets the electro in, Petals of Zero Petals of One consists of three concatenated tracks, sequenced in a low-tech echo
chamber. Winner of the 1913 Prize, “Georgia” has been praised by Cole Swensen as a “vibrant disaster” that “keeps us feeling falling,” while Peter Gizzi calls it a “high velocity tour-de-force.” The central series, “Arrow’s shadow,” is a fractured ars poetica and an elegiac encounter with landscape and syllable, with pixelated forms and light. “Storm, lustral” choreographs an epileptic last dance along the ditch waters and wanderlust of the Dasein. This volume affirms Susan Howe’s claim that Zawacki “combines the disciplined perception of a naturalist with the inspired perception of a poet.”
"Andrew Zawacki is a poet of startling, exhilarating capacity… Zawacki’s vital talent is bewitching." —Harrison DeSales, Boston Review
"Zawacki leans into the uncanny, describes it exquisitely, and gives us a world that feels fully and personally engaged… He takes on the world and its pluralities with a generosity that is rare, beautiful, and convincing. —Malinda Markham, The Antioch Review
"His poems survey the topos of language even as they break from and are sometimes broken by it. They involve themselves in what Blanchot calls a “habitless inhabiting” of time and place. —Chad Davidson,Chicago Review
"Zawacki’s formalism renews the art of arabesque, a motif defined by 19th-century aestheticians as a perfect synthesis of enthusiasm and irony. [A] self-critical lyricism interlaces desire and detachment." —Andrew Joron, Rain Taxi
"Zawacki’s poems feel aesthetically and ethereally beyond the terrestrial, taking it into the land of language, or language into the land of the terrestrial so both dissolve and become phantasmagoric visitations. —Jennifer Dick, Jacket