A world under sentence

the long version

In The Cheat of Words McCaffery expands on the linguistic and political issues addressed in his previous book Theory of Sediment. In this new work the reader encounters, and must negotiate, an insistent slippage of meaning. Exploiting the inherent "shiftiness" of language, that tendency of phrases to refuse to link into higher syllogistic ensembles, McCaffery demonstrates the incessant potential within writing to disturb all drives toward centrality, and stability. Defiantly non-lyrical and non-narrative this poetry achieves a neo-baroque festiveness within its regulatory scepticism.