{"product_id":"9781550227222","title":"Apostrophe","description":"\u003cbr\u003eyou are entirely happy with your poem \/ you are not happy then there is no charge and your deposit is returned \/ you are totally satisfied with the outcome \/ you are a man \/ you are a little confused \/ you are entirely happy with your poem \/ you are not happy then there is no charge and your deposit is returned \/ you are totally satisfied with the outcome . . . ”Apostrophe” is: a) a figure of speech in which a person, an abstract quality or a nonexistent entity is addressed as though present b) a poem written in 1993 in which every sentence is an apostrophe c) a program—apostropheengine.ca—based on the 1993 poem that hijacks search engines in order to extend the poem infinitely d) a book of poetry written using the website The answer: e) all of the above. Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler-Henry’s Apostrophe contains all of these things, except the search engine (but you can visit that any time you like). Each line from the original poem has become the title of a new poem generated by the program’s metonymic romp through the World Wide Web. Phrases rub against each other promiscuously; poems and readers alike come to their own conclusions. The results are by turns poignant, banal, offensive and hilarious, but always surprising and always unaffected. In other words, everything a book of contemporary poetry should be, and then some. Poet and scholar Charles Bernstein has suggested that Apostrophe may be related to Freud’s notion of the uncanny, a somnambulistic drift that appears aimless yet somehow always returns to “you.” Apostrophe is an entirely new kind of poetry: neither stable nor unstable, sections come and go, but the overall shape of the poem remains vaguely familiar, like a trick of memory.","brand":"ECW Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47030561865968,"sku":"9781550227222","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781550227222_p0.jpg?v=1763751299","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781550227222","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}