The Relativistic Empire

Book excerpt: Samuel Andreyev inhabits several worlds: he is bilingual and lives in France; he is an internationally-known composer; and he is a writer whose material is the bric-à-brac of everyday speech and rhetoric, forged into a poetry of obsessive perfectionism. Part mental autobiography, part ode to a new, radically mobile consciousness--The Relativistic Empire combines the diagrammatic elegance of the comic strip with the complexity and elusiveness of symbolism. Praise for The Relativistic Empire: "The Relativistic Empire is a carnival of specific instructions. Andreyev's declensions describe absurd reality. Humour takes the poems on all the rides, from 'real' to 'false' in all their mirrors." --Alice Burdick, author of Holler "The Relativistic Empire shows the exquisite in the everyday; the slips of the tongue which sharpen the pencil's point until it bleeds. Our things--and the names we give them--slide from strange to stranger, from contained to container. Whistling the orchestration of a beautiful 'teflon ballet,' Andreyev makes the poem march to clockwork and despair." --derek beaulieu, author of Please, No More Poetry and How to Write