Unlocking the Exits

Eliot Katz's poems are exuberant democratic earth-watch, spiced with surreal imaginings, utopian cravings, and activist humor.

In his new collection of poems, Eliot Katz dances with tenacity on the fine line between poetry and politics--engaging in a democratic earthwatch that is spiced with surreal imaginings, utopian cravings, personal discovery, and spirited humor. Employing elements of modernist experimentation, the book's longest piece, "Liberation Recalled," includes testimony of his mother's WWII concentrations camp experiences interspersed with his own stylistically-varied verses on contemporary social themes. Katz inventively explores questions of historical and intergenerational legacy, psychic reconstruction, and the challenge of building a more humane future.