The Czar

Name: The Czar
SKU: 978-1-62557-948-5
Price: 15.95 USD
Availability: InStock

Publication Date: August 2016

Description

The poems of The Czar by Mary Biddinger and Jay Robinson stand at the intersection of ironic political commentary and hyperbolized body currency. In the world of this collection, the Czar is a figurehead replete with ceremony and artificial gestures. But is he provocative humor or allegorical heft? And what happens when power is passed to the powerless in a secret handshake that’s more tongue on tongue than tongue-in-cheek? This book-length collaboration pivots between comic interludes and satirical exposés, at its heart the rhythm of the present tense, history’s most unreliable narrator no matter the king or kingdom.

Praise

As a child, my mother taught me to zigzag Z to avoid getting eaten by an alligator. Mary Biddinger and Jay Robinson employ this technique here: in the clever curve of C around the subject, in the sharp switchback tack of Z for zealous. They commit to wordplay revolution, erasing origins, replacing narrative with wit, sound, and imagery so surprising it feels, by poem’s end, perfectly natural: the thing that waited, haunting, in the swamp. I don’t know how else to explain The Czar, whose unexpected becomes so expectant with meaning. This is a brilliant collection/collaboration.

–Carol Guess, author of Doll Studies: Forensics

This exquisite, feature-length project is the comic jam. But it’s no joke. You can thank Mary Biddinger and Jay Robinson later. For now, arm yourself with a few questions: What rules does this Czar follow? Which ones does he break? And just how many ways can you fold a Czar in the first place? Are you ready? The Czar demands your participation. Enter the parlor!

–Matthew Guenette, author of American Busboy

This book is not a book, it’s treatise on empire, a manifest destiny, a pack of wild peasants outside the gate, a mesmerizing tour d’effluvia in its Czar not Czar, throne not throne, overthrown mistresses, Lady Czar is no Czarina, cappuccino foam isn’t foam, revolution was a hoax, naming and renaming, unlearned cursive, unheard flute solo, empire under construction, not New York, not Sacramento, non-tabloids, non-violent non-women. Biddinger and Robinson rebuild our world and take it away piece by piece to show the conviviality of our destruction.

–Elizabeth J. Colen, author of What Weaponry

About the Authors

Mary Biddinger

Mary Biddinger is the author of numerous books with Black Lawrence Press, including Department of Elegy (2022) and Partial Genius: Prose Poems (2019). She is also co-editor, with Julie Brooks Barbour, of A Mollusk Without a Shell: Essays on Self-Care for Writers (University of Akron Press, 2024). Her debut work of fiction, a novella in linked flash stories titled The Girl with the Black Lipstick, will be published by BLP in July 2025. Biddinger teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Akron and in the NEOMFA program. She has received awards and fellowships from the Cleveland Arts Prize, Ohio Arts Council, and National Endowment for the Arts. Her current project is a new collection of prose poems about feral 1980s childhood and a close-knit block on the northwest side of Chicago.

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Jay Robinson

Jay Robinson is the co-author of The Czar. He teaches at Ashland University and The University of Akron. He’s also the Co-Editor-in-Chief/Reviews Editor for Barn Owl Review and helps edit The Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics. Poetry and prose has appeared in 32 Poems, The Laurel Review, Poetry, Whiskey Island, among others. The Czar, forthcoming in August 2016, is his first book.

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