“You sense uncertainty,” puns Biglieri, “And recover it.” These poems are written in a world paralysed by its own aporia, no road no lyric subject possible, the boundaries of subject and object blurred beyond perception in an endlessly manipulated indifferent culture lacking will and imagination. They are written, as one poem says, from the exact middle of nowhere, where the alphabet is primal pun, and “the things we really know are words.” Ironic and sardonic, these witty poems, carefully sequenced but independent in their interlinking echoes and iterations, are a wake-up call; they emerge from the gap between what is there and what is not, testimony to our impossible desire for clarity of vision. The absence is all here, one line says, and sleep can’t process it – a dilemma beautifully caught in a headlong fluid syntax which demands close attention and repeated reading, conundrums of thought and observation led by Biglieri’s alert astonished ear, the mind led by sound. Wonderful poems, voicing unillusion. They stay.” —Peter Quartermain The image on the cover is a chalkboard rendering of Biglieri Syndrome by endocrinologist Edward Biglieri. The poem is set in Scotch and the display font is Dada Pro from P22. Printed on Mohawk Superfine Ultrawhite Eggshell. Sleepy with Democracy is Biglieri’s first trade edition paperback. 104 pp. (22.5 x 13 cm.). 2006. Edition of 500 copies. $10
Gregg Biglieri was born in San Francisco on October 17, 1960. He is the author of five chapbooks: Profession (Idiom 1997), Roma (BeautifulSwimmer 1999), Los Books (Cuneiform 2002), Reading Keats to Sleep (Cuneiform 2003), and I Heart My Zeppelin (Atticus Finch 2005). El Egg, a long poem in three movements ("Deadpan," "El Egg," and "L'Infinito—Eat Your Mistakes") documenting a midsummer nightmare's journey through the bowels of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and including a long critical essay (Tarrying With the Particular) as an appendix, was published by Eclipse Editions 2003 (available online at english.utah.edu/eclipse). This work has been described as "Gregg's Hegelian pillow book." His poems have appeared in Lyric &, Prosodia, Mirage #4/Period(ical), Proliferation, Kenning, Antennae, Sal Mimeo, Boston Review, and New Yipes Reader. He contributed an essay on Francesco Borromini to the book Architectures of Poetry (Rodopi 2004) and has work appearing in Ronald Johnson: Life and Works (National Poetry Foundation, forthcoming). Essays on Bruce Andrews (Jacket magazine) and Joseph McElroy (Electronic Book Review) may be accessed online. "Inquiline," an essay that burrows into the writing of W. G. Sebald, burrowed its way into Kiosk (no. 1, 2002). Most recently, "On Reznikoff's Testimony" was published in P QUEUE (vol. 2, 2005) and "You Dig," an essay on Robert Creeley's work, appears in Golden Handcuffs Review (Summer, Fall 2005; vol. 1, no. 5). He currently lives in Buffalo, where he is finishing a dissertation on Louis Zukofsky's Bottom: On Shakespeare in the English Department at Temple University.

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