Honestly

Poetry. The third book in a trilogy that explores the limits of individual expression, HONESTLY is an intimate, quiet, and unresolved little book about talking and listening. It begins with research into a forgotten relative who was kicked out of the author's family after he was jailed for conscientious objection to WWII, and who then moved to New York to become a composer. From there the poem swerves into a series of minor-key personal anecdotes, interlaced with conversations with friends about work and relationships. Throughout, communication is framed by the economics and psychology of the home. Dialogue takes place in close quarters--constrained by money, space, ego, and empathy.

"Steven Zultanski is a great raconteur. In HONESTLY, he loquaciously monologues about everything from municipal corruption to asparagus horticulture with charm and authority. But this prose-like poem isn't merely a filibuster. As it unfolds, HONESTLY spirals closer and closer to the silence behind speech."--Chris Kraus

"Steven Zultanski is in love. 'When I was a boy I compulsively told my parents I loved them, ' he informs us, then adds: 'I still have that compulsion.' With HONESTLY, Zultanski has written a deft, side-winding a love poem (a true love poem) to urban life, with its apartment banalities and moving days, worried friends and fresh cuddlefests, troubled family history and film lore. He loves, we learn, in fits and starts, through compulsions and diversions, with a wry eye on the plain, everyday things--those 'details in stories transversed with other details'--that shine when they are remembered and held close. Honestly gives us what we seem to need most: the real and the true."--Andrew Durbin