01-05-2012

Couverture, "Clangings" by Steven Cramer (Sarabande books US)

Clangings is a book-length sequence of poems comprising a single dramatic monologue. The speaker manifests the thought disorder known as “clang associations”–mental connections made between dissociated ideas through rhymes, puns, neologisms, and other non-linear speech, occurring frequently in schizophrenia and mania. This dramatic premise, coupled with strict form–each poem composed in five rhyming quatrains–develops a character who articulates, through and against language, a pressing need for coherence and stability. 

http://www.stevencramer.net/clangings/