A politico-linguistic problem, a conflicted hairstyle, and a conflict-bound drone, Fauxhawk works in the space where dissent becomes materialized, ironized, and commodified. Engaging drone optics, redactions, renditions, comedy, and cinema, Ben Doller wrenches exuberant music from the drone of the everyday. The citizens in these poems are fraught in their passivity, both ashamed of being and of being surveyed. Occupied by the material forces conspiring against poetry, Fauxhawk takes on the economics of writing, university bureaucracies, and complicit injustice. The poems in Doller's thrilling new collection attempt to find their own tone amid the blare via formal innovation, carving a space where presence is signified, in hopeful and clarifying resistance.
"Doller's work is complicated and fascinating; and what internal force it comes from-I do not know. Instead of a story, he gives us clues for our own insight, and in this way we get to define the poem instead of having the poet do it for us. It's not calculus and it's not narrative but something in between."
Grace Cavalieri
""A riveting and rambunctious collection of new poems by one of America's most innovative poets. The experimental encounters the historical in these raucous yet deftly written poems of modern-day dissent.""
