Agony is the first in a trilogy of long confessional poems. It uses semi-rigorous mathematical and logical constraints to view the author’s life and body, telescopically, as little bits of time and space. Everything written here is as true as possible – that is to say, pretty true. It attempts autobiography as a refutation of autobiography, and an elevation of the self as self-effacement. Love pops up as a theme quite a bit. So does self-mutilation, etc. There are a lot of numbers, but don’t worry, it’s more about politics and fantasy than numbers, even though, as usual, they show up everywhere. Just like pieces of your body after you’ve cut them off and scattered them all over the world, and then go out looking for them again, for some reason.

Steven Zultanski is the author of five books of poetry, most recently On the Literary Means of Representing the Powerful as Powerless (2017) and Bribery (2014). His critical writing has appeared in 4 Columns, Art in America, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Mousee, and elsewhere. In January 2017, an art exhibition inspired by his book Agony (published by BookThug in 2012) entitled You can tell I'm alive and well because I weep continuously was shown at the Knockdown Center in Queens. Steven lived for many years in New York City but now resides in Copenhagen, Denmark.

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