In his third book of poetry, Andrew Zawacki, an assistant professor in English at UGA, explores the dynamics of one and of none: being and nothingness, binary code, virtual flowers in a bulletproof vase, she loves me she loves me not, etc.
Inflected by an ecopoetics that lets the electro in, Petals of Zero Petals of One consists of three concatenated tracks, sequences in a low-tech echo chamber.
Winner of the 1913 Prize, the book’s first track, “Georgia,” has been praised by Cole Swensen as a “vibrant disaster” that “keeps us feeling falling,” while Peter Gizzi calls it a “high velocity tour-de-force.”
The central series and second track in the book, “Arrow’s shadow,” is a fractured ars poetica and an elegiac encounter with landscape and syllable, with pixelated forms and light.
“Storm, lustral,” the book’s third track, choreographs an epileptic last dance along the ditch waters and wanderlust of the Dasein.
This volume affirms Susan Howe’s claim that Zawacki “combines the disciplined perception of a naturalist with the inspired perception of a poet.”
Zawacki is also the author of Anabranch and By Reason of Breakings. He is currently translating Sébastien Smirou’s Mon Laurent from the French.