Sagittarius Agitprop (Paperback)

Poetry. SAGITTARIUS AGITPROP makes of the heart and family history the stuff of mythology and "agitated propaganda," filtered through a voice that is at once angry and tender, hilarious and asshole-ish. Like the left-wing "agitprop theatre" of 1920's and 30's Europe, these poems often intend to provoke via unfairness, smoke and mirrors, a desire for stepped-on love, and veiled jokes The poems within involve eunuchs and Stravinsky, fishermen and Picasso, infant daughters who speak with whales, dying fathers who fetishize coffee mugs with moose on them. Also involved, as equalizers of sorts, are a vulgar Prometheus, Marilyn Monroe, an astronomer rabbi, a bag of almonds, a dead grandfather reincarnated as a sheep, an aardvark with issues of body image, and a mythical zebra. Each, as the title indicates, gets its trial by heart, by fire, by cosmos, and by picket line.