The Virginia Woolf Poems

Three sequences drawn from Virginia Woolf's novels by Mac Low's "diastic" method which is described in the short essay, "The Genesis of 'Ridiculous in Piccadilly," at the end of the book.

"The extravagant riches of Jackson Mac Low's prodedural imagination have never been better served-a blazing Protean compendium of wit and resourcefulness."
--Jed Rasula, Sulfur

"If you read these poems slowly and savor every clash, every switch thrown without sufficient warning, you'll enjoy yourself."
--Bill Bamberger, New Pages

"He questions our assumptions about what poetry is and what it is supposed to do ... to disturb the conventions of perception... To see him (esp. in performed pieces) acting it [anarchism] out is invigorating; to take him as seriously as he takes his work could be transforming. He might be right about the Universe."
-Charles O. Hartman, "Essay Ending with Six Reasons to Read Jackson Mac Low," Prairie Schooner

"A virgo intellect doing a genius trip with a cosmic chuckle. Writing to expand your horizons (as he has mine, since 1959). You can learn or have fun--he's always a challenge, and new."
--Carol Berge, Center

"Mac Low's emotional engagement with the material is attested to by political undercurrents, not often found in this kind of writing. Essential..."
--Rochelle Ratner, Library Journal

"Mac Low stands with John Cage as one of the two major artists bringing systematic chance operations into our poetic & musical practice.... One of our true inventors, creating new modes and bringing us back to the oldest possibilities of sound and language."
--Jerome Rothenberg

"Mac Low's work conduces to an extension of family, to a religious spirit in which one feels there is nothing to which one is not related. This is the experience of silence."
--John Cage