 Djelloul Marbrook, a contemporary English language American poet, writer, and photographer, was born in 1934 in Algiers, Algeria the son of an Algerian father and American mother. He grew up in Brooklyn, West Islip, and Manhattan, where he attended Dwight Preparatory School and Columbia University. He worked as a soda jerk, newspaper vendor, messenger, theater and nightclub concessionaire, and served in the U.S. Navy and Merchant Marine... [more] |
 A young war widow at the author’s boarding school molests him and his classmate Sally. Ludilon, a short novel, portrays him as an adult obeying an impulse to learn if Sally is all right. But none of them will ever be all right, not Aisling, the widow, and not the children. The novel and the accompanying poetry collection, Sailing Her Navel, are their testament in their own voices. |
 The linked cantos comprising “Lying Like Presidents” are a kind of echolalia in the service of anonymity. Echolalia, usually associated either with a child learning to speak or a disorder, here is a matter of conscience in a poet who craves anonymity in honor of cosmic oneness but remains craven enough to rely on his name, his vita. The cantos are also a paean to two childhood friends whose echolalia enchanted him and now haunts him. The cantos are followed by poems selected from Marbrook’s twelve earlier poetry collections. |
