Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
I Confess - cover

I Confess

Eric Schmaltz

Publisher: Coach House Books

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

How is a lyric poem like a polygraph machine? A personal, poetic examination of the technology of truth-telling. 
Eric Schmaltz’s I Confess delves into the complexities of truth-telling in poetry, and the history of technologies designed to produce truth from willing and unwilling subjects, considering what it means to use a device – poetry or polygraph – to draw out one’s most profound feelings and emotions. 
Exploring the intersection of power, technology, and language, I Confess meditates on lie detection and its history, including trials by ordeal and pseudoscientific technologies. The poet then turns to his own personal experiences working with a lie detector and polygraph analyst. Taking himself as the central subject of the book, Schmaltz puts his subjectivity and positionality under scrutiny. 
The answers to questions such as What does family mean to you? and Can you describe a time when you felt your best? inspire a range of forms from conventional lyrical verse to list poems to palindromes to visual poems. With an afterword by Orchid Tierney, I Confess is a personal, poetic document of truth’s performance under duress.
Available since: 09/09/2025.
Print length: 112 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • A470 - Poems for the Road Cerddi'r Ffordd - cover

    A470 - Poems for the Road...

    Sian Northey, Ness Owen

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Arguably the most famous road in Wales, the A470 is 186 miles from shore to shore through the backbone of Wales, linking north to south. From the seashore to slate quarries, from nuclear power stations and fighter plane flypasts to forests, mountains and the capital city.
    
    Travelling through memory, myth, love and grief, we learn lessons, ache for match tickets, stitch ourselves together and encounter famous goats.
    
    O bosib y ffordd fwyaf adnabyddus yng Nghymru, mae'r A470 yn ymestyn am 186 milltir o arfordir y gogledd i arfordir y de trwy ganol Cymru. Ar ei hyd gwelir traethau a chwareli, atomfa ac awyrennau rhyfel, mynyddoedd a'n prifddinas. Yn y gyfrol hon cawn 51 o gerddi gwreiddiol, wedi'u cyfieithu o'r Gymraeg, neu i'r Gymraeg, i greu casgliad dwyieithog sydd yn ein harwain ar hyd yr A470.
    
    Cawn ein tywys trwy atgofion, chwedlau, cariad a galar, dysgwn wersi, rhannwn docynnau gêm, pwythwn frodwaith ein gwlad a gwylio'r geifr.
    Show book
  • WHERE ELSE - An International Hong Kong Poetry Anthology - cover

    WHERE ELSE - An International...

    Jennifer Wong, Tim Tim Cheng,...

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Featuring both established and emerging Hong Kong poets across generations and continents, this unique anthology offers a glimpse into an exciting, diverse range of voices that make up the diasporic imagination of the contemporary Hong Kong poetry community. Adopting a diasporic approach, the anthology encompasses both native Hong Kong writers as well as expatriate and mixed-race voices who were born or have lived in the city.
    With a preface from the Hong Kong-born, California-based poet Marilyn Chin and a joint introduction from the co-editors, the anthology sheds light on some poignant, wide-ranging themes such as migration, identity, gender, language, belonging, environment that underpin the city of Hong Kong, a place situated uniquely between the East and the West, in the 21st century. The book also features a selection of artworks from some of Hong Kong's most talented artists, inviting the reader to make connections between the visual images and the text.
    Show book
  • Dybbuk Americana - cover

    Dybbuk Americana

    Joshua Gottlieb-Miller

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Inventive poetry explores Jewish identity in America"How can I teach a prayer / I only know how to recite?" "America, whose death / didn't you come from?" These are some of the questions that poet Joshua Gottlieb-Miller wrestles with in his beautiful, gripping new collection. By turns experimental and documentary, Dybbuk Americana draws out the questions around Jewish identity in the United States, and what it means to pass on Jewish identity to one's child. This hybrid text draws on art, mysticism, and history, taking the dybbuk, a figure from Jewish folklore, as its central metaphor. A dybbuk is a restless spirit who inhabits another's body, and as a possessing spirit the dybbuk is often treated as a demonic force, but it can be read as merely trying to climb the ladder of the afterlife. In other words, a kind of striver. Enacting the idea of competing selves in one body, Dybbuk Americana plays with form via a series of text boxes that create a multi-channel effect on the page. The body of the poem can be read with surrounding and intercutting text boxes to generate multiple interpretations. This innovative poetic technique maintains a dialogue with Jewish literary lineages: Talmudic commentary and interpretation of the oral law, as well as the fragmented nature of geniza, a place where Jews store sacred documents when they fall out of use. Dybbuk Americana weaves together the father-son arc within a larger socio-political commentary and historical narrative. Poems move deftly between the ironic and the mystic, from aphoristic questioning and inventive narratives, to interview, oral history, and archival materials. In these lines, "the angels./ They get as close as they can." Witty, curious, warm, and searching, Dybbuk Americana signals a fresh voice in Jewish-American poetry.
    Show book
  • The Suspicions of Mr Whicher - cover

    The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

    Kate Summerscale

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Summer 1860, an elegant country house, a young boy is found dead in an outside privy. All clues point towards the murderer being a member of the grieving household.
    Called to the scene is the most celebrated detective of his day, Jonathan Whicher from Scotland Yard. But this case challenges him in ways he's never been challenged before.
    Over twenty years later, still haunted by the case, Whicher visits the murderer. As they replay the past, they start to question the nature of truth, the desire for certainty and the possibility of redemption.
    This compelling stage adaptation of Kate Summerscale's gripping bestseller opened at The Watermill Theatre, Newbury, in May 2023.
    This ensemble piece provides rich opportunities for companies looking to intrigue their audiences with a fresh take on a dark Victorian mystery.
    Show book
  • Don't Leave Me With Her - Short science fiction story - cover

    Don't Leave Me With Her - Short...

    Dr. Amr Mounir

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    How technological development and artificial intelligence can affect our human relationships. Can machines replace human connections?
    Show book
  • Bycatch - cover

    Bycatch

    Caroline Smith

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    In Bycatch, a new collection by the Ted Hughes Prize shortlisted-poet Caroline Smith, the poems ask where personhood is when memory and language are gone. They capture the faltering years of a life gradually scraped bare by the deep-sea trawler of dementia – yet find amongst the isolation and sadness, moments also of clarity, epiphany and love.
    Whilst these poems chart deep waters, they remind us also of the enduring and miraculous bond between those who have known each other for a lifetime. With grace and often with humour, Smith unravels the intricate nature of care, the symbiosis of family, and ultimately the sense of self held in the memories and personal histories of her own parents. It is in the swell of the wave, as ageing and loss threaten to engulf even the words, these extraordinary poems remain tender, unforgettable and salt-sharp.
    Show book