no time like now: Poems

by Andrei Codrescu

Overview

In Codrescu’s own words:
“I wrote my first book of poems, License to Carry a Gun (Big Table, 1970), when I first lived in New York City, 1967–1970. Those were troubled times and I was 21 years-old. Decades later the city has changed and the times are still troubled. These poems, 2016–‘, try to find out just how changed my dear city and how troubled my days.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822965824
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	03/26/2019
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Andrei Codrescu was born in Sibiu, Transylvania, Romania, and emigrated to the United States in 1966. He is the author of numerous books: poems, novels, and essays. He founded Exquisite Corpse: a Journal of Books and Ideas, and was a regular commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered. He taught literature and poetry at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Baltimore, and Louisiana State University.

Read an Excerpt

On form
 
I know you hate the poignancy of last lines because they sound like “class dismissed. think of the lesson. it’s not multiple choice.” That’s because one expects the door out of the poem at the end whereas it’s at the start. Read it backwards and you are free just like you were before you came into this kind hell. There is no class but the sonnet lurks somewhere like a naked woman behind a curtain on the third floor of the building across the street. I caught a glimpse and I was happy, I didn’t even think I was a man, proof to the contrary. I was a sonnet with a door. Unfinished line, you upset everyone and it’s a good day whatever the lodgings.
 

Table of Contents

Leaving 3

The revolution: return to new york 6

Yes i am my credit card 7

Written question from freud 8

The return of the 2nd person plural 9

Dwindling repair shops in queens 10

On form 11

Nothing is complete now without architecture 12

What about humans changes like the type i type? 13

If i feel anything stronger than this 14

Shoelace 15

How time deals with the heart's annoying presence 16

Vintage 18

Pre-call notice to a 108th street developer 19

Interest 20

Mesmerism for m, rare flower 21

On frames & fragility & squares & ovals for Ina 22

Letters 23

Apology 24

Return of the repressed in the age of avant-garde robots 25

2017 benjamin arcades at the Jewish museum 26

The twelve-line sonnet needs you 28

From "sad-americans-writing-in-cantinas-too-drunk-to-tell-if-they-are-walking-into-la-baranca-or-into-the-literary-canon" 29

Rise of the north (again) 31

Studies & discoveries 32

Moving lynnea to brooklyn 33

Lynnea sonnet 34

Moving on we all must 35

No time like now 36

Melancholia, the thing 37

String city 39

Flat is dead 41

I stumbled into a reading in a bookstore in the winter of 2016 42

Names 43

Misleading history 44

Real history 45

Christians and blasphemers december in san francisco 47

Artist and monster sex 48

The changes 50

Big dad a 51

In praise of weakness 52

Tattered holey fabric 53

No smoking sonnet 54

Visual notes on the constitution 55

Lynnea's sci-fi novel 62

No weather haiku 63

From "eliminating clichés & other hospital escapes" 64

Bad idea 65

Funny not funny 66

Deafness is no excuse 67

Exercise 68

Sympathy for the phone 69

In the zoo 70

The future of sleep collage of discarded parts 71

Early sex positions 72

Story 73

You there said the hermit crab 74

Acknowledgments 79

Editorial Reviews

On every page, Andrei provides us with a poetic tap on the shoulder: ‘We are still in the wine roses goat and sesame seed phase of the revolution.’ In other words, there is as much joy as there is threat in the world, as much threat as there is possibility; we are called to respond, and remember. This collection repairs and raises our spirit(s).

Sharon Mesmer

In his newest collection of lyric poems, the brilliant Andrei Codrescu reveals himself yet again as our funniest/saddest contemporary bard. Newly returned to New York, the city of his youth, Codrescu the flâneur observes the daily disjunctions of Manhattan life in all their absurdity. Astonishingly honest, bittersweet, hilarious, and heart-breaking: no time like now is a book you must read!

Marjorie Perloff

Andrei went there as an adolescent (U.S.); later I came here (France): we have known each other forever. I read his new book no time like now and see how similar (semblable) we remain in a zoo world of cellphone-users with customs. Older ones who have mastered their art are left with the glee of language. These poems also contain plenty of love.

Alice Notley

Codrescu lands on a powerful statement on how we can interact with the contemporary world he struggles to write about: “I was new in America your strings vibrated / in a newness new even to the new world / a world that must be courage itself or die.

Josh Cook

"With humor and grace, wisdom and tenderness, Codrescu transforms the commonplace into the miraculous. His work is cause for celebration." —Kay Boyle


“In his newest collection of lyric poems, the brilliant Andrei Codrescu reveals himself yet again as our funniest/saddest contemporary bard. Newly returned to New York, the city of his youth, Codrescu the flâneur observes the daily disjunctions of Manhattan life in all their absurdity. Astonishingly honest, bittersweet, hilarious, and heart-breaking: no time like now is a book you must read!” —Marjorie Perloff
                                          

 


"Andrei went there as an adolescent (U.S.); later I came here (France): we have known each other forever. I read his new book no time like now and see how similar (semblable) we remain in a zoo world of cellphone-users with customs. Older ones who have mastered their art are left with the glee of language. These poems also contain plenty of love.” —Alice Notley


"Codrescu lands on a powerful statement on how we can interact with the contemporary world he struggles to write about: 'I was new in America your strings vibrated / in a newness new even to the new world / a world that must be courage itself or die.'" —Josh Cook, LA Review of Books

From the Publisher