Optic Subwoof

A collection of Bagley Wright lectures given by Griffin Poetry Award-winner and National Book Award finalist Douglas Kearney.

OPTIC SUBWOOF is a collection of talks that poet and National Book Award finalist Douglas Kearney presented for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series in 2020 and 2021. As kinetic on the page as they are in person, these lectures offer an urgent critique of the intersections between violence and entertainment, interrogating the ways in which poetry, humor, visual art, music, pop culture, and performance alternately uphold and subvert this violence. With genius precision and an avant-garde sensibility, Kearney examines the nuances around Black visibility and its aestheticization. In myriad ways, OPTIC SUBWOOF is a book that establishes Kearney as one of the most dynamic writers and thinkers of the twenty-first century.

"All the while, Kearney's language is always new, is always about possibility and expansion, and always dazzling."--Victoria Chang, LARB

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Essay. Poetics. Art. African & African American Studies.

Author: Douglas Kearney
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Wave Books
Published: 11/15/2022
Pages: 232
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.90w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781950268672

About the Author
Douglas Kearney has published seven poetry collections, including Sho (Wave 2021), which is a finalist for the PEN and the National Book Award, Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry, and the California Book Award silver medal for poetry. He has received a Whiting Writer's Award, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others. Kearney teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and lives in St. Paul with his family.