Vaudeville

Poetry. Allyssa Wolf's first collection of poetry examines the tension between acting and being, as well as the possibility of ethically practicing illusion using theatrical language and stage devices. The book is structured as a vaudeville in five acts, with four of the acts being serial poems and the other a poem-play. Each act represents the consciousness of a kind of performer, but instead of enacting speech from a stable persona, its speakers shift, in tightly wound time (with beginnings and endings), within the borders of each act. Inspired by the language, art, and lives of many different sources, from Lenny Bruce, to Harry Houdini, to Jean-Luc Goddard, to Annette Messeger, and William Shakespeare, as well as the history of puppets and automata, Wolf's virtuosity is not practiced in the shadow of any particular school of contemporary literature, nor is it an historical re-enactment. VAUDEVILLE, in the author's words, is a book "clearly written for strangers, for the movement of strangers."