Spiderwasp or Literary Criticism
Juliana Spahr
1998
No Longer Available
No sooner have you opened Spiderwasp's marbleized wrapper (drenched in whirlpools of loden, pink and gold pressed on off-white tissue) then you are extra disoriented by flipping to facing pages four and five -- the beginning of dual texts, left-page and right- page -- that carry the titles "Introduction" and "Addendum," respectively. And between left and right pages, yes! you are locked in as Spahr's third text, snagged within an alluring, triangulated web!
—Jack Kimball, Jacket Magazine
Today, the most vexing problems in poetry, of whatever categorical definition, are laxness, complacency, intellectual smugness, aesthetic ennui. Spiderwasp offers a corrective.
—Ben Friedlander, Langiappe
Here, as elsewhere, Spahr is both critical and meta-critical: on the recto of each page is an essay on contemporary experimental writing, and on the verso is a narrative--or fable--concerning a tarantula.... Spahr's writing is incisive and challenging as usual.
—The Chicago Review