Blert

The bright, taut, explosive poems in Jordan Scott'sBlertrepresent a spelunk into the mouth of the stutterer. Through the unique symptoms of the stutterer (Scott, like 50 million others, has always stuttered), language becomes a rolling gait of words hidden within words, leading to different rhythms and textures, all addressed by the mouth's slight erosions.

In Scott's lexicon, toblertis to stutter, to disturb the breath of speaking. The stutter quivers in all that we do, from a skip on a cd to a slip of the tongue. These experiences are often dismissed as aberrant, but inBlert, such fragmented milliseconds are embraced and mined as language. Often aimed full-bore at words that are especially difficult for the stutterer, Scott's poems don't just discuss, they replicate the act of stuttering, the 'blort, jam and rejoice' involved in grappling with the granular texture of words.

As Scott says in his author's note, 'Blertis written to be as difficult as possible for me to read.'Blertpresents the stutter on its own terms every tense moment of personal struggle with language as a rolling, unstoppable gallop of words within words. (From Coach House Books)

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