The Book of Immaculate Perception / Madrigals is a tête-bêche (flip book) by Marc Zegans and Larry Beckett in which both Madrigals by Beckett and The Book of Immaculate Perception by Zegans read from their respective fronts-to-backs in a single spine format. The confluence between these paired chaps extends beyond shared narrative lines to independently formed yet common imagery and complementary methods of composition. In each body of work, you will find compactness of speech, form that liberates line, and an easy flow from poem-to-poem that animates and enriches the experience of reading these two sets of poems in each other’s company
Larry Beckett’s poetry ranges from songs to blank sonnets and 100-page narrative works. His lyric, “Song to the Siren,” is a modern standard. In the years since, he’s written the postmodern epic, American Cycle, including the long narratives Paul Bunyan, Wyatt Earp, Amelia Earhart, and he has reinvented Sonnets. The Book of Merlin is a recovery and translation of the 6th-century Brythonic poet, and Romances Without Words / In Solitary is the first translation of the prison manuscript of Paul Verlaine. Beat Poetry is a study of the poets and poetry of the fifties San Francisco renaissance. These madrigals are to a child from conception on
Here then is a book you will want to spend some time with. The connective tissue, ideas that act in concert and opposed to one another by the writers etch-a-sketch and transform themselves with each reading, In my mind there is a reader that starts and never ends, are those the work of the writers or of the reader? The call and response of Zegans and Beckett is dependent on the physical act of the reader turning the book over and starting again. These two highly regarded writers call the reader in to turn over the sands of time, both temporally and figuratively. There is, in fact, magic in this world and this book sings to it. Read this paragraph backwards if you don’t believe.
Do check out the short for Marc Zegans’ half of the book The Book of Immaculate Perception which premiered yesterday. The book is out worldwide now. Here is the short Larry Beckett’s book Madrigals.