Poetry Is Useless
ISBN10: 1770462074
ISBN13: 9781770462076
Hardcover
224 Pages
$29.95
In Poetry is Useless, Anders Nilsen redefines the sketchbook format, intermingling elegant, densely detailed renderings of mythical animals, short comics drawn in ink, meditations on religion, and abstract shapes and patterns. Page after page gives way under Nilsen's deft hatching and perfectly placed pen strokes, revealing his intellectual curiosity and wry outlook on life's many surprises.
Stick people debate the dubious merits of economics. Immaculately stippled circles become looser and looser, as craters appear on their surface. A series of portraits capture the backs of friends' heads. For ten or twenty pages at a time, Poetry is Useless becomes a travel diary, in which Nilsen shares anecdotes about his voyages in Europe and North America. A trip to Colombia for a comics festival is recounted in carefully drawn city streets and sketches made in cafes. Poetry is Useless reveals seven years of Nilsen's life and musings: beginning in 2007, it covers a substantial period of his comics career to date, and includes visual reference to his books, such as Dogs & Water, Rage of Poseidon, and the New York Times Notable Book Big Questions. This expansive sketchbook-as-graphic-novel is exquisitely packaged with appendices and a foreword from Anders Nilsen himself.
Reviews
Praise for Poetry Is Useless
"A remarkable and moving book in which Nilsen appears to hold little back. Many of the pages feature strike-outs, words and sometimes entire dialogue balloons deleted, as if process were more important than a sense of finished work . . . Much of Poetry is Useless appears random: a view through a window, a bulldog seen in a coffee shop. But these chance observations and encounters, they add up to form a life. That this is the case for all of us goes without saying, but if art has a purpose, it may be to get us to slow down and take notice of all the moments, all the nuance, we might otherwise overlook."—David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times