Endangered Hydrocarbons

the long version

"Lesley battler’s first full-length collection of poems, shows that the language of hydrocarbon extraction, with its blend of sexual imagery, archetype, science, pseudo-science, and the purely speculative, can be as addictive as the resource it pursues. Using pastiche and wordplay, Battler shines a floodlight on the absurdity and pervasiveness of production language in all areas of human life in the oil fields, including art, culture and politics. Incorporating texts generated by a multinational oil company and spliced with a variety of found material (video games, home décor magazines, works by Henry James and Carl Jung). Battler deliberately tampers with her sources, treating them as crude oil – excavating, mixing and drilling them to emulate extraction processes used by the industry – in a lively and refreshing take on one of the most serious environmental, economic and social issues of our time." -- Book jacket.