Born in Du Quoin, Illinois, George Albon grew up there and in St. Louis, Missouri. He took a degree in film theory from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. For the last twenty years he has lived and worked in San Francisco, California.
His first full-length book, Empire Life, was published by Littoral Books in 1998. This was followed in 2000 by Thousands Count Out Loud, from lyric& press, and in 2003 by Brief Capital of Disturbances, published by Omnidawn. This last title was awarded with four others “Book of the Year” by the Small Press Traffic literary foundation. A book-length poem, Step, was published by Post-Apollo Press in 1995. Recently available on the internet is an e-book at the Duration Press website. His essay “The Paradise of Meaning” was the George Oppen Memorial Lecture for 2002.
“There’s a notion in my Oppen talk that, while referencing him, really applies to anyone’s struggle with poetry as I understand it, and that’s the idea of it resulting when a thematic bearing (on the one hand) and a glimmer of potential language-energy (on the other hand) somehow manage to appear to each other. In this context, form becomes the most metaphysical thing imaginable. Not the lattice, form is the horizon of thinking in poetry.”
BOOKS OF POETRY:
Possible Floor (San Francisco: e. g. press, 1990); King (Buffalo: Meow Press, 1994); Empire Life (Los Angeles: Littoral Books, 1998); Transit Rock ( Sausalito, California: Duration Press, 1999); Thousands Count Out Loud (San Francisco: lyric& books, 2000); Reading Pole (Los Angeles: Seeing Eye Books, 2000); Brief Capital of Disturbances (Richmond, California: Omnidawn Press, 2003); Step (Sausalito, California: Post-Apollo Press, 2005)
[Reprinted from The Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative Poetry in English, 2005-2006]
Copyright ©2006 by Douglas Messerli and Green Integer.
