Army of Lovers: A Community History of Will Munro

(Paperback)

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"This experimental work is not for the faint of heart, but it is laced with meditations that will appeal to readers concerned with poetrys role in the world."--Publishers Weekly
"I am fascinated by their attention to inequality, to questions of violence and community: something borne out by the collaboration itself."--Bhana Kapil's Best Books of 2013 on The Volta
"An Army of Lovers explores the liminal spaces where cities and individuals come together and stand apart with strange, brainy grace."--Michelle Tea, author of Mermaid in Chelsea Creek
"By means of a series of stylistically and tonally various prose segments (by turns reflexive and dialogic, ironic and depressive, unhinged and hallucinatory, wetly emotional and dryly wry, including a detournement of a Raymond Carver story), the book centers, emotionally, on the ebb and flow of what it calls 'struggle-force.' Signature drone strikes, torture, ecological collapse, environmental illness and chronic fatigue syndrome: it's all connected." --Miranda Mellis, Rain Taxi
"The book offers many ways of approaching the age-old questions What makes something art and What makes someone a decent citizen, as well as (if not primarily) exploring the ways in which the answers to these questions might intersect. More impressively, it does so without being didactic and yet without being obscure, as so many efforts at high-concept art tend to be."--Evan Karp, SF Weekly
"Fantastical, lyrical, whimsical and wildly experimental, An Army of Lovers is as serious as it is absurd."--Christopher Higgs, HTMLGIANT
"Authors who co-write often produce two halves that refuse to coalesce, but East Bay poets Juliana Spahr and David Buuck fuse with fantastic results in this short experimental novel. It's the story of Demented Panda and Koki, two poets united by a desire to write politically engaged works. Wounded, bored, inspired and skeptical, they soldier on through a landscape of toxic spills, consumer excess, odd juxtapositions and trance states."--Georgia Rowe, San Jose Mercury News
"Authors Spahr and Buuck, who appear in this novel as Bay Area poets 'Koki' and 'Demented Panda,' style it up all the way from magical realism to 'new journalism' and Raymond Carver Cathedralspeak, but it's the weary 'I can't go on. Ill go on' optimism at which wounded veterans of the army of lovers excel. Theirs is a rigorous book, and a book of marvels, with something funny, something painful, stirring on every page."--Kevin Killian, author of Spreadeagle
"This picaresque story about the 'particular lostness' of poetry, the ways poems always win and the lives of self-described 'mediocre' poets is actually pretty hilarious! Its also smart, incisive and politically astute. Now, to the barricades!"--Rebecca Brown, author of American Romances: Essays
An Army of Lovers begins with the story of two poets, Demented Panda and Koki, united in their desire to write politically engaged poetry at a time when poetry seems to have lost its ability to effect social change. Their first project is more than a failure, resulting in a spell that unleashes a torrent of raw sewage and surrealistic embodiments of consumerist excess and black site torture techniques. Subsequent chapters feature an experimental composer (Koki) and a performance artist (Panda) whose bodies are literally invaded with the ills of capitalism, manifested through leaking blisters and other maladies, as well as a radical remix of a Raymond Carver story, questioning What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry. The novel concludes with Panda and Koki returning to the site of their failed collaboration to conjure up a more utopian vision of an army of lovers. Fantastical, lyrical, whimsical and wildly experimental, An Army of Lovers is as serious as it is absurd.

Reviews

"With her characteristic insight, elegance, wit and generosity, Sarah Liss gives us the first, important account of Will Munro -- one of the most important queer artists, activists, promoters and community builders Toronto has ever seen. His impact, memory and influence loom large, and Liss is one of the few people I'd trust to tell his story the way it should be told." -- Michael Cobb, Professor of English and Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto and author of Single: Arguments of the Uncoupled "Will was pretty much the perfect role model. He was such a one-of-a-kind person. He really understood that throwing parties and shows is a part of creating community and that it can be dirty and crazy and chaotic, but also inclusive and positive and creative rather than destructive." -- Beth Ditto, The Gossip "Even in his passing, [Will] is still transforming things." -- Luis Jacob, artist (Toronto Star) "Munro's work is about nothing so much as life and inspiration, in their purest forms." -- David Balzer, Canadian Art 'Army of Lovers is so fascinating it's already earned a place on the mandatory reading lists of high school and university queer-studies courses, in my opinion. Its pages should be torn out of the book and wheatpasted on every weirdo kid's locker in every high school in every suburban hellhole.' -- Keith Cole, Xtra! 'Through her reconstruction of the past, Liss proves she is a gifted storyteller deeply moved by her subject matter, approaching [Munro's] legacy like a meticulous curator.' -- Stacey May Fowles, The National Post '... The most productive force of Army lies not only in conveying the community history of a queer, whimsical, superstar community builder, but in its very documentation through collective memory. Army gives us a different history of queer life in Toronto that must be remembered in order move forward.' -- Lambda Literary Review of Books

Author Bio

Sarah Liss: Sarah Liss is The Grid's frequent music columnist and an associate editor of the culture section. Her writing has appeared in a number of places, including Toronto Life, Maisonneuve, CBC.CA, Spinner and FLARE, and onstage at Nightwood Theatre.