spuytenduyvil

One of the dumbest things ever said, “All Politics is Local,” rushed into our vocabulary as if it were American crack wisdom for the ages. The meme spread, however, through a different kind of local: inter-personal contact, a greater morality, disproving and exploding any and all quaint notions Americans might assert in the long roll-call of assertions they as a people have made since assuming the mantle of World’s Top-Cop. Rob Cook uses personal implacement and his own intimate sense of universal being to root out lies at the heart of American policy and boots-on-the ground myth-making. He performs what a poet does best: extolling beyond naive pictures of "realism" and propaganda. All places are subject to his personal scrutiny, singing from the center of sober touch, not alone for “Democracy” but the shallow discrepancies hegemonically gripped by the powers-that-be in their attempt to contain sandgrains of primordial mortality. Every ignited note in Cook’s arsenal re-projects the American lie back onto its own mis-guided Ship of Deserted State, moving that would-be opinionated ark into a more resonant and accurate stream.

               t thilleman, author of Blasted Tower