p.inman
at.least
ISBN 1-928650-03-1
$9.00
102 pages

"Peter Inman has written in at.least. a painstakingly meticulous book that is both clinically cold and unerringly humane. It is a bizarre, almost classic, experiment which surprises and provokes (disturbingly) a sequence of sensations that shakes us to our cognitive core, at least as to what words are and how do we read them. That is to say, the poems run at different speed, and there is no indication of the limits, just that one finds oneself either reading dot to dot or stumbling over the pages like a sheet of laser. at.least. is a hard core verbal preamble with such dialectic velocity it leaves us dazed if not choking on the fumes. Corners are not beveled; they are cut razor fine and held so tightly to one another as to gauge the thin membranes of signs and cause them to leak meaning. If by the end of the collection of poems Lenin, who makes several appearances as an embodiment of thought and action, doesn't exactly "understand" the work, he certainly would have commissioned P. Inman for a post in an Arts Committee."

--Hung Q. Tu



"Hardly anything seems strange enough anymore 'reality. as. a. normative. effect,' at least P. Inman still works the front lines. With evidence shimmer, no things but in letters & space & punctuation, politically paying off perforation. This arranges tantalizing raw (& V-effected) materials for us to construct (& live in) a life, a milieu. With zero bluster 'language. larger' contra code everywhere, a clip-o-matic audacity & atomic redlining to thrill. Syllables leave their lipstick as synonyms for individual letters. Cuts the each, so let's go watch cells divide 'of. someone. / else's. dictionary.' as decompression 'leaked. agency.' for 'language. without. a. channel.' Not to complacently cooperate with a fetish or impress with imagery & optic sugaring, not to wield massageish 'content' to represent something already built, an institutionalized titanic humanizing the pin-ups or invoice behavior as contentment as containment. The already is uninhabitable. Let's de boss!"

--Bruce Andrews



P. Inman's books include Criss cross, Ocker, Uneven development & Vel. He lives in Greenbelt, MD. with his wife Tina Darragh. A dues-paying member of the Labor Party, he has been involved in local union activities since 1981. He is currently Vice President of AFSCME Local 2910.