Jared Stanley on His Poems

Lucky me, I came of age during the era of video nasties, satanic metal music, and the early rumblings of horrorcore in hip hop, each form a manifestation of what Victoria Nelson calls the Sub-Zeitgeist, a world of low art where metaphysics and the supernatural irrupt through the negations of evil. Music of the no, to adapt an idea of Enrique Vila-Matas’. Many of my poems grow in that stinky substrate.

The first poem is the shadow of a poem by Lindsey Boldt and takes its title from a line of Simone White’s. The second was commissioned for an installation, but we decided to make a sound piece rather than a poem, so it transformed from an incantation into this grumpy prose. And the third was inspired by a person on the news saying that there are around a trillion bullets in the United States. A trillion.