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Sonosyntactics introduces the reader to over forty-five years of Paul Dutton's diverse and inventive poetry, ranging from lyrics, prose poems, and visual work to performance texts and scores. Perhaps best known for his acclaimed solo sound performances and his contributions to the iconic sound poetry group The Four Horsemen, Dutton is a surprising, witty, sensitive, and innovative explorer of language and of the human. This volume gathers a representative selection of his most significant and characteristic poetry together with a generous selection of uncollected new work.
Sonosyntactics demonstrates Dutton's willingness to (re)invent and stretch language and to listen for new possibilities while at the same time engaging with his perennial concerns - love, sex, music, time, thought, humour, the materiality of language, and poetry itself.
Gary Barwin's introduction outlines the major subjects and techniques of Dutton's poetry: an intricate weaving of thought and language, sound and emotion, sound and sense, and the unfolding of a text through the logic of language play such as puns, paradoxes, ambiguity, and sound relations. In an afterword by Dutton himself, the poet insightfully lays out the terms of his engagement with the materiality - both visual and aural - of language, often beyond the purely recountable, representational, or depictive.
About the author
For over four decades, writer and musician
Paul Dutton has steadfastly maintained his commitment to the integrated expression of the literary, the sonic, and the visual. He has issued seven books (poetry, fiction) and five recordings, plus eleven print and audio collaborations (The Four Horsemen, CCMC, and others), and has performed across three continents, solo and in ensembles.
Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, multimedia artist, educator, and the author of eighteen books of poetry and fiction. His recent books include
Moon Baboon Canoe (poetry) and
I, Dr Greenblatt, 251-1457 (short fiction).
Yiddish for Pirates (novel) will appear in 2016. He received a Ph.D. from the University at Buffalo and was the 2014-2015 Writer-in-Residence at Western University. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
