It's pure serendipity that the 49th book to bear the Otoliths imprint just happens to have the title that it does.....
7 x 7
Crag Hill
56 pages,
Page size 8½" x 8½"
Cover image by Nico Vassilakis
Otoliths 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9806025-7-9
$13.45 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/7-x-7/10899413
Implicitly comparing a book to a deck of cards, and that deck of cards in turn to the world of social violence we’re dealt, Crag Hill stakes his ante on the power of poetry to witness and document the multiply-layered, self-inflicted insanity of US daily life in the Bush years. As readers we become participants and are thus empowered to say no to the game of death. —Maria Damon
One of the most important things I look for in poetry is something I can believe—something without posturing or postmodern cynicism or post-anything for that matter: something that stands outside of facile labels, something (disorientingly/ seemingly) simple that makes me see and hear and feel—and more importantly, makes me believe—in the world, in poetry, in the process of poesis. Crag Hill’s poems make me believe and listen—and more importantly—make me want to listen. And best of all, they are far from simple and believe in a chance-laden process. They make our world. These are poems fiercely engaged with/in our current and tragic socio/ political/ecological moment and I am deeply grateful for them, because gratitude is the beginning of understanding. These poems remind me that rage and discontent is the genesis of change, that "death is death"—such a necessary reminder in times of such alienation from it. Let us now go make and change, listening to this poet’s example. —Christopher Arigo
"Scattered parts/now lie about what happened." 7 X 7 parses the dizzying bomb crater sized duplicities of the thoroughly mediated, mediatized and militarized zeitgeist which we have collectively dealt ourselves into. Crag Hill is looking to see where the proverbial chips are falling. And he's playing with a full deck. —Tom Beckett
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