Where are the faces of yesteryear? Is one face easier to wear than another? These crucial questions are left unanswered in Albert Mobilio's fifth book of poems. Instead, the vexed relationship between the physical world--it's tactility and thereness--and this phantasm we call persona is interrogated.
The 50 short–short stories are based on old–time games played in parlors, basements, and fields with balls, brooms, blindfolds, and cards. As winners and losers emerge from dodge ball, word games or balloon contests, so does the theme of our inner life as ceaseless competition.There is calculation, envy, humiliation and joy, and there is always the next round when everything might change.
"Throughout Bendable Siege, virtually every line has the taut ripple of its own ongoing lyricism. One might miss a word here or there but only at one's risk. We're immediately in the realm of the irreducible." —Gustaf Sobin.
“Mobilio’s poetry is the ultimate detox center for reality addicts,” wrote Robert Creeley. Infused with pop culture references spanning Tom and Jerry cartoons, Spinoza, and the confessions of a stag film actress, these poems revel in roughhouse lyricism. Mobilio is the winner of a Whiting Writers Award and the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award for excellence in reviewing.
