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The Tower
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About The Tower
Product Description W. B. Yeats meets Gregg Araki at a gay bar.The Tower is a "translation" of W. B. Yeats's The Tower—an homage and reinvention of the poet’s greatest work. Whereas Yeats’s book contended with his mortality as an aging spiritualist Irish Senator, this version contends with a new mortality: ours.The poems in this collection crystallize the transition from Legault’s late twenties to his early thirties, situated in North America during a time of political upheaval. It takes each of Yeats’s poems as a starting point and queers them. It translates Yeats’s modernist urge, on the other side of a long century.In her review of The Tower, Virginia Woolf says Yeats has “never written more exactly and more passionately.” One might imagine she’d conclude the same here. You can’t fault these poems for lacking passion.Yeats used to talk to ghosts. His wife would let ghosts talk through her. They would talk to Yeats, and he would write down what they say. Another way you could put it is that Yeats talked to his wife. Ghosts are much closer than you think. They like to live in books. So Legault spent some time talking to Yeats’s ghost. Or, Yeats’s ghost talked to him. This is him talking back."Through Legault, the opening of Yeats’ words in the title poem shift and turn from absurdity to one of anxieties around ageing" —rob mclennan's Blog"If you've never cared about poetry, you will after reading these modern-day renderings..." —Maria-Claire Review "If you've never cared about poetry, you will after reading these modern-day renderings…" —Marie-Claire"Sheer genius that begs to be recited aloud." —Daily Candy"A valuable contribution to the field of radical translation." —Lambda Literary Review"Through Legault, the opening of Yeats’ words in the title poem shift and turn from absurdity to one of anxieties around ageing" —rob mclennan's Blog Review "Giddily Paul Legault traipses through the classics and makes them quiver with an anachronistic affectless delight they didn’t know they were permitted to feel. The Tower continues his project of rubbing the old songs to produce blissful new serums. It’s Oedipal. It’s also exegetical. How he manages to extract such tonally exacting fun from fallen fruit is a secret I beg him never to divulge." —Wayne Koestenbaum Review On Lunch Poems 2:"What is so great is that these shouldn’t be great but they are. It’s like clay keeps escaping the statue and making a blur. Like Frank and Paul are in an orgy together sometime somewhere and Paul suddenly (or maybe forever) leans his chin on his fist smiling and pleased (but not always happy) because he knows that it’s great to be a poet — someone bursting out of a bag like a cat now and then just oh to be alive." —Eileen MylesOn The Other Poems:"Samuel Beckett would love Paul Legault. Both boys know that when absurdity holds hands with characters on stage (or on the page), pathos ensues. These poems are brilliant gems of invention and lightly-finessed emotion. And very funny. I love them. Truly I do." —Mary Jo BangOn The Emily Dickinson Reader:"You know the kind of joke that's super-hilarious but also points in some genius way to the whole thing of the universe? Like that." —Daniel Handler About the Author Paul Legault is the author of The Madeleine Poems (Omnidawn, 2010), The Other Poems (Fence, 2011), The Emily Dickinson Reader: An English-to-English Translation of the Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (McSweeney’s, 2012), Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror 2 (Fence, 2016), and Lunch Poems 2 (Spork, 2018). He also co-edited The Sonnets: Translating and Rewriting Shakespeare (Nightboat, 2012). Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. A PRAYER FOR MY DOGI wish the strongest ghost were here to guard my Brooklyn baby from whatever things are until it’s all just easier thoughts like breakfast. Make sure my bodyguard guardian angel’s packing. I don’t want to have to mourn on the internet.
