The Plot Genie - Softcover

Conoley, Gillian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1890650420 ISBN 13: 9781890650421

Publisher: Omnidawn, 2009

Synopsis

Inspired by "the plot genie" a plot-generating device created in the 1930s that used numerical games of chance to divine character traits and plot points this imaginative, book-length poem discusses the ways in which people are re-created, inspired, aroused, and persuaded by the power of the stories that they listen to and share. Rich in scene and cinematic quality, the plot visual and literary, old and new recombines all into a simultaneous present, examining society’s endless hunger for narrative. Exploring and blending genres with exciting and lyrical language, references to film and pop culture are laced throughout. Presenting a memorable cast in moving and humorous motifs, this rich composition explores the way the characters behave when inhabiting a construct created by ideas.

About this title

About the Author:

Gillian Conoley is an award-winning poet and the founder and editor of VOLT—a national literary magazine. She is the author of Beckon, Lovers in the Used World, Profane Halo, Some Gangster Pain, and Tall Stranger, and her work has been included in several anthologies, including Best American Poetry, The Body Electric, Nuova Poesia Americana: San Francisco, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology. She lives in Corte Madera, California.

From Publishers Weekly:

Conoley's sixth collection—which takes its title from a plot-generating system devised in the 1930s by silent screenwriter Wycliffe A. Hill—is a book of many sources (ancient and contemporary, cerebral and tabloid) that all point toward cinema. Archie, Betty and Veronica appear in one poem, while another features the less likely trio of Walt Whitman, Paul Bunyan and Aristotle, all of them eerily imprisoned by an elaborately illusive studio system. There's an atmosphere of decay throughout, replete with chambers dim with histories, and locusts/ without end. At its best, the book reads like an exceptional film noir projected onto the mind's eye. The world is a weird luminescence, writes Conoley. A greenish glow, unhinged, Experimental poetry fans and cinephiles will find much that haunts and stimulates. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Omnidawn
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1890650420
• ISBN 13: 9781890650421
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 136