Under Albany

With startling frankness, Under Albany lifts each "new sentence" of Silliman's Albany to show us what's underneath. The resulting paragraphs are glimpses not only into Silliman's history, but into that of our times. Each is a sensitive seismograph reconding shocks of social struggle. -- Rae Armantrout Under Albany is the shadow movement of Ron Silliman's epic of everyday life, The Alphabet. Silliman provides a set of extended, vividly etched, mostly autobiographical, meditations on the background for each of the original 100 sentences of his 1981 poem Albany. This constructivist memoir provides an exquisitely rich exploration of the relation of context to reference, subtext to meaning, back story to presented experience, and composition to poetics. All of Silliman's work unravels and reforms in this exemplary and exhilarating act of attention, recollection, and reflection. -- Charles Bernstein

Small Press Traffic “Book of the Year 2004”. This memoir provides an exquisitely rich exploration of the relation of context to reference, subtext to meaning, back story to presented experience, and composition to poetics. Silliman’s work unravels and reforms in this exemplary and exhilarating act of attention and reflection.

Small Press Traffic “Book of the Year 2004”. This memoir provides an exquisitely rich exploration of the relation of context to reference, subtext to meaning, back story to presented experience, and composition to poetics. All of Silliman’s work unravels and reforms in this exemplary and exhilarating act of attention, recollection, and reflection.