Lake Antiquity

Poetry X eleven = Lake Antiquity. Lake Antiquity is a rectangular swimming pool in the E.U.R. district in Rome, built by Benito Mussolini to be heralded at the 1942 World Expo as the epicenter of Fascism. Brandon Downing’s Lake Antiquity meets the challenge of this absurdity and countless ineradicable others. The culmination of more than a decade of visionary irreverence, this fulminating iteration of text-collages makes a perfect holiday gift for the poetry lover. Brandon Downing has scoured refuse piles and skimmed the creme/scum off the top of two centuries of cultural production for these chiming elements. His paste-ups are cut-ups; his cut-ups are pasted with a discrimination that shares a border with insurgency.