No Gender: Reflections on the Life & Work of kari edwards | Edited by Julian T. Brolaski, erica kaufman,and E. Tracy Grinnell

kari’s authorial “signature” undoes the authorial body in favor of a visible obfuscation—strikethru: kari never just signed, but rather crossed out hir name and wrote “NO GENDER.” The erasure—well no, the palimpsestic remaking of the name into a symbol for the dismantling of enforced gender codes is a profound and provocative gesture—the name is still visible behind the NO GENDER, as if behind bars… kari’s genius moved others to their own words, art, action—following a mandate of reclaiming the very words we speak and write—writing our selves, our other(ed) bodies, into a foundational postgender post-genre state. This book is the start of what hopefully will be a much longer conversation.
—from the introduction by Julian T. Brolaski & erica kaufman

With contributions from Cara Benson, Frances Blau, Mark Brasuell, Julian T. Brolaski, Reed Bye, Marcus Civin, CAConrad, Donna de la Perrière, E. Tracy Grinnell, Rob Halpern, Jen Hofer, Brenda Iijima, Lisa Jarnot, erica kaufman, Kevin Killian, Wendy Kramer, Joseph Lease, Rachel Levitsky, Joan MacDonald, Bill Marsh, Chris Martin, Yedda Morrison, Eileen Myles, Akilah Oliver, Tim Peterson, Ellen Redbird, Leslie Scalapino, Michael Smoler, Sherman Souther, Eleni Stecopoulos, and Anne Waldman.

kari edwards (December 2, 1954 – December 2, 2006) received one of Small Press Traffic’s book of the year awards (2004) and New Langton Art’s Bay Area Award in literature (2002). edwards is the author of obedience (Factory School 2005), iduna (O Books 2003), a day in the life of p. (subpress collective 2002), a diary of lies—Belladonna #27 (Belladonna Books 2002), and post/(pink) (Scarlet Press 2000). edwards’ work can also be found in Scribner’s The Best American Poetry (2004), Bay Poetics (Faux Press 2006), Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action (Coffee House Press 2004), Biting the Error: writers explore narrative (Coach House 2004), Bisexuality and Transgenderism: InterSEXions of the Others (Haworth Press, Inc. 2004), Experimental Theology, Public Text 0.2. (Seattle Research Institute 2003), and Blood and Tears: Poems for Matthew Shepard (Painted Leaf Press 2000).

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BHARAT JIVA

kari edwards

Radical rishi poet-seer-sage kari edwards’s stunningly powerful and erudite essay-rant-manifesto-‘swarm of / messages’ calls a nation of docile bodies to account: ‘no more… protecting the audience from/exploding stigmatas, tracer bullets and the / shit of the dead.’ Deploying lyric thrust ‘to detonate the heart,’ blown bodies, categories and lines enact new ‘delicious fractal’ social contracts for reducing suffering in the body public/private and generating ‘growth in the sky of mind.’ Read this book and you’ll never go back.
—Rachel Zolf