Minesweeper

<p><em>Minesweeper</em> is not only poetry but an exceptional piece of art of extraordinary caliber. <em>Minesweeper </em>sweeps us off our feet with its state-of-the-art bilingual-hyphenated prepotent field of precocity and its intense algorithmic / microchipic tenderness / terseness / ingemination. It's so supremely well-balanced so playful so brilliant. While breaking our hearts with piquant line breaks Jed Munson relentlessly surprises us with his accelerated gravity of recombineable scrabblic vulnerable inventions and cataclysmic candidness. It is a chapbook that defies our limitations and flourishes with dynamic energetic wit. -<strong>VI KHI NAO</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Do not forget Wittgenstein once cautioned that a poem even though it is composed in the language of information is not used in the language-game of giving information. One would never forget such a thing when reading Jed Munson's ludic lucubrations which are as razor-sharp as they are full of risk and rambunctiousness. Engaging with Munson's <em>Minesweeper</em> is to get swept up in a poetics of polyglot playfulness. When the odds are stacked against us it is heartening to know that there is a fine new player in town. Game on. -<strong>MICHAEL LEONG</strong></p><p><br></p><p>Jed Munson's poems in <em>Minesweeper </em>get the far out present the present present the remembered present & the shadow present at minimum together freaking the scene and sensed. They make rhythm and interruption be bound to one another as a multi-lingual record of consciousness and this happens across a range of tones textures and forms in space constantly moving. I dig their angry and amused pleasure in handling and unhandling the steady intermittence of listening. -<strong>ANSELM BERRIGAN</strong></p><p><br></p><p>[Winner of the 2022 <em>DIAGRAM</em>/New Michigan Press Chapbook Contest]</p>