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Scott Esposito

Scott Esposito is the co-author of The End of Oulipo? (with Lauren Elkin; Zero Books, 2013). His writing has appeared recently in Music & Literature, Drunken Boat, and The Point. His criticism appears frequently in the Times Literary Supplement, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post.



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The Last Redoubt

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November 2014

Scott Esposito

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November 2014

As they say of politics, I have found essay-writing to be the art of the possible. Certain work can only be done in those...

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February 2014

Another Way of Thinking

Scott Esposito

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February 2014

I. There is no substitute for that moment when a book places into our mind thoughts we recognise as our...

DEDICATION   Flamingo, urchin, bestiaric beast: Paroling city matters, you re-form From pigeon’s dirty feather to a quill   A parlour game: we reach the dovetailing Between those singing spasmic pities that We summon, and the dank urbanity   You wreak It comes to punish this reserve Love: whether zoo, circus, menagerie, All matters of a name more so than form,   Let us rush towards autowilderness, Strifed with wet, chaostic humours 1 Erotic prescience : I sense us : one   We’ve taken flyte, so let us rest in shelter, Into the original of the world, Nothing can stop our loved country from mattering   ONE   *   There is a woman turning a woman turning itself on   Sick hydra starting up    I dream of sea becoming seaworthy to sea   The sea drownsy    in its offensive capability   Drownsy Baby        thirsting in its sleep        Hush now   Totemic fetish or mnemonic logo    :    her offensive cheep    :    untid’ly starting up for the tide    :                cheap   *   You cannot scry in your own silver when its ripples split the vision   They cannot peer into a depth they’ve mined        and filled Selfsang in their own gags        Dull drams overfilled —spilling unward   Eat your eyesight, bastard            Ring yourself unfit   *   Q: Where has this water gone? Why disappear?   A: Add an arch to the middle of valour There’s your answer       In the mean time, build a city        Then build a countryside for balance   Now, not sea at all                They become   ardor’s coldened shoulder            Ardor eccentric Radiating inward   Throttling at different purposes and speeds   *   TWO   An altared state urned in a loss of verse Severed then served with coming of the morning My love has earned this insurrective swerve That seeks to crash the calming of his mourning   *   You rest inequality   If I was embedded in a painscape, it’d be different   Q: Where do you rest? A: Camped out in the bedazzled house of his runtish fantasy   His House Believes   As it is now, there is an asterisk to every kiss     Let me rest in that nest of those pink, electric branches   There, there is safety   *   THREE   To have a handle on something is to have the capacity to turn it on or off   *   What I    cuse him of I    cuse myself   *   When they are together, their shape is endless and content   The sea drinking the sea                    The sea is drinking the sea   *   The vulvic octopus dies with her young Meanwhile, I:    waste    with my    youth   The staggering dear does not accept my hand, fawning

Contributor

August 2014

Scott Esposito

Contributor

August 2014

Scott Esposito is the co-author of The End of Oulipo? (with Lauren Elkin; Zero Books, 2013). His writing has...

Negation: A Response to Lars Iyer's 'Nude in Your Hot Tub'

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September 2012

Scott Esposito

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September 2012

I do not know whether I have anything to say, I know that I am saying nothing; I do not know if what I...
Art's Fading Sway: Russian Ark by Aleksandr Sokurov

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May 2012

Scott Esposito

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May 2012

I have often fallen asleep in small theatres. It is an embarrassing thing to have happen during one-man shows, and I am certain that...

READ NEXT

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September 2015

Immigrant Freedoms

Benjamin Markovits

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September 2015

My grandmother, known to us all as Mutti, caught one of the last trains out of Gotenhafen before the...

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December 2016

Bonnie Camplin: Is it a Crime to Love a Prawn

Bonnie Camplin

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December 2016

  The title of Bonnie Camplin’s exhibition at 3236RLS Gallery, ‘Is it a Crime to Love a Prawn’, brings...

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Issue No. 3

Borism

Lee Rourke

Oliver Griffin

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Issue No. 3

ES9 is the latest body of work by Oliver Griffin in his archival series The Evaluation of Space. Taken...

 

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