Artifice in the Calm Damages

Overview

As a drummer, Andrew Levy’s rhythmic knowledge is intimate and the work of Artifice in the Calm Damages moves across a range of percussive possibility, with its long lines and structured blocks of text providing a solid lead to the everyday madness of our sensational public life. As a frontline worker on the pedagogical front, teaching community college in the nation’s largest public urban university system, Levy’s concerns are far from the gravytrain of the poetry business as generally reflected in the ideological morass of the “profession,” with its programs, prizes, and highly managed conformity. Underlying the sometimes extravagant sensory overload that is so much a part of this Artifice, Levy’s poems are ferocious in their political indignation. Exuding an all too rarely articulated sense of classconsciousness—however one reads across the theoretically dense texture of syntactical relations—these Damages are altogether necessary, and very much of our time and place. Amail Alcalay

Author Biography

Andrew Levy is the author of Notes toward a Supreme Fiction 2029, Artifice in the Calm Damages (chapbook), Don’t Forget to Breathe, Nothing Is in Here (novella), and ten other collections of poetry and prose. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous American and international magazines and anthologies, including PoeticsfortheMorethanHumanWorld – An Anthology of Poetry & Commentary; Light Abstracts the Smallest Things: The Aesthetics of Basil King; The Canary Islands Connection – 60 Contemporary American Poets; and Resist Much / Obey Little – Inaugural Poems to The Resistance. Levy’s writing works on the intersections of class and the ecology of commerce, and experimental music and the digitalization of freedom. A drummer, he works in collaboration with musicians and poets on readings and performances. He teaches journalism at BMCCCUNY.