Description
Title: Espionage Act, The: New Poems
Author: MAIDEN JENNIFER
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 01/02/2020
Imprint: QUEMAR PRESS
Price: $20.00
Publishing status: Active
The Espionage Act is the new poetry collection by the internationally renowned author, Jennifer Maiden. With her characteristic clear, powerful focus and crisp but sumptuous lyrical style, she analyses espionage in many senses, from the U.S. 1917 Espionage Act to reflections on the Deep State, to tactical levels in conservative espionage, to its sexuality of fear, to covert promotion and funding of experimental art, to espionage as survival, and to espionage’s reactions to primal digital technology. Maiden also describes the mind itself in its acts of espionage. When she was asked about the unique style encompassing the collection, she replied: ‘Genres such as the exclusively lyrical introspective, lyrical observational, introspective experimental, abstract experimental non-sequential, satirical or experimental satirical are all in their essence confined in a microcosm, even if with suggested resonances, but my technique attempts to operate in a macrocosm, where all those other techniques can seem be utilised but are actually transcended. The purpose is to confront, present, inhabit and question real powers (individual or universal) in the world from as equal a basis as literature – which in itself has a natural potential for equality – allows.’ Here, being capable of facing power is also an equalising force, and understanding espionage is a way of understanding power in domestic and global terms. In one of the poems, Maiden’s created character, George Jeffreys intrigues his CIA drinking friend from Langley by observing ‘the metaphysical necessity of understanding espionage to provide a macrocosm to oppose the microcosm of obvious immediate reality.’ Characters across this sphere include Gore Vidal, Julian Assange, Alan Turing, Dorothy Wordsworth, Jackson Pollock, Brett Whiteley, Gabriel Marquez, Alexander Downer, Emma Goldman, Princess Diana, Mike Pompeo, The Master of the Crossroads, Jeffrey Epstein, and Maiden’s own Clare and George, the sometimes sharply allegorical but always simply endearing little marsupial Brookings, George’s CIA drinking buddy, the indigenous ASIO agent Olivia, and the archetypal critic, who is an aspect of any person with whom he speaks. Within this collection, the mind’s intrinsic acts of espionage can help remedy power or the lack of power. Clare, for example, watches the pre-dawn sky on behalf of her siblings, whom she murdered as a child, and explains: ‘the mind has many mansions, many rooms and the children I killed as a child are in my brain, with me in reality physically and cognitively, to enjoy the moon’s wane even when I’m not aware existentially of them. I remain always their agent. My mind is a constant act of espionage.’ In another poem, the poet asks about spies: ‘How often were they actually drunk? How often were they actually angry?’ Here, the poem can end: ‘our unknown is always home.’ Within this collection, actions of espionage can presuppose concealed emotional truth, just as acting presupposes an actor. Exploring espionage’s psychological complexities and deceptions allows the poet to observe and dismantle annihilating concepts of espionage – whether they involve intelligence operations, institutional deceptions, intimidations or assassinations – with her own guile and profound passion.
ISBN: 9780648555223