Complete Idiot's Guide to Football by Joe Theismann

Complete Idiot's Guide to Football by Joe Theismann

ACID WESTERN is a mutagenic contemporary anti-western. The poems in this collection can be seen as dispatches from the architectures of the terrain of the hyperobjects one finds themselves inside of in the 21st century, in which the social and political structures moved through on a daily basis are occurring (scaling, nesting + accumulation, incompletion, ephemerality, and oscillation are recurring features of the collection).

Time and space are also important features of these poems, both thematically, as well as formally in their composition. The notes that became the poems were written over a period of time, and arranged into the sequences here. The idea is to capture a sense of the time, space, distance, multiplicity, and complexity of the daily mundane; intersecting, looping, reiterating through this and these spaces within large and varied timescapes, in an effort to describe a sense of scale and an unfolding of interconnected events and entities, within the contemporary reverberations of violent foundational mythologies, culminating with a direct entreaty in an effort to dissolve the atomization of the enmeshed collective.

ACID WESTERN doggedly confronts the contemporary malaise we try (and fail) to ignore more and more every day: what to do with the mess of data and busted language that skitters through the air around us, or, as Balun heartbreakingly calls it in a deictic gesture for the ages, all this this. By doing some top-notch demolition work and stripping his lines down to their essences, Balun likewise builds these caring, weightless lyric poems that course through their negative space rather than overcrowd or shout through the page. What do we do with our malaise in Robert's poems? We wake up, we look for traps, we course through the mess by listening. You ever wake up on a weekend next to someone you love? This crusher of a debut feels like that. There's hope in that feeling, along with life, along with the unknowable. In poem after poem after poem, I kept thanking Robert Balun for creating this world in which the phones are off, the streams haven't yet begun, the banners haven't come to cover us, and the sun is still steeping up in the sky. - Danniel Schoonebeek

Theismann, Joe: - Joe Theismann is a household name, having built his reputation playing quarterback. A collegiate All-American in football and academics, he graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1971 before embarking on a fifteen-year professional career, twelve with the Washington Redskins in the NFL. An entrepreneur at heart, after a career-ending injury in 1985, Joe leveraged his knowledge and expertise as an elite athlete into two decades as an NFL analyst on ESPN and The Sports Network. His accomplishments include being runner-up for the Heisman Trophy in 1971, earning the NFL's most valuable player (MVP) award in 1983, the year he led his team to a victory in Superbowl XVII, holder of multiple Redskins records-- passing yardage (25,206), completions (2,044), and attempts (3,602)--being selected to the Pro Bowl twice, earning the Pro Bowl MVP award once, and being named 1982 NFL Man of the Year for community service and his commitment to the health and welfare of children. In 2003, he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and in 2013 received the Walter Camp Foundation Distinguished American Award. All these achievements can be traced back to his infectious positive spirit, which uplifts and improves the lives of those around him.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780028641676
ISBN 10	0028641671
Title	Complete Idiot's Guide to Football
Author	Joe Theismann
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Pearson Professional Education
Year published	2001-10-11
Number of pages	360
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.