Bloom

Rob Schlegel's chapbook Bloom, published by Green Tower Press earlier this year, explores the ramifications of our "Medium-sized American" identity. More specifically, the collection investigates the manner in which our contemporary ennui, articulated in the "American sigh," is actually the "limit of [our American] privilege." In order to serve as a counterpoint to this "American...behavior" that predicates itself upon "American television" and all the trappings of today's consumer-culture, Bloom desires "the feeling of being engaged in the world" once more (or for the first time). Accordingly, the solution, it would seem, is a call for visceral poetry, wherein "Into language I am putting back my body." And what does the infusion of the body back into language accomplish? Perhaps it effects a particular ethics, wherein "I am the I undone, immersed in one perspective / to reach another," so as to commune with the ever-elusive Other. Or stated differently (click image for review in bigness):