Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Hybrid Genre. "In the tragi-comic--and worse--chaos of our times--suppose our writing began to appear as letters caught in barcodes. Phrases and bits of words breaking off en route to scanners designed for registering information but not the disturbance of meaning. It is, literally, with this provocative vision that Judith Goldman's AGON begins. Fragments--words with ing or ite or ppeals detached--mark the violence and folly of our weaponized and otherwise benighted cultures. At times, a necessary lyricism wells up without betraying the truth of 'Cumulative transfers By the 'agreed upon' price / the Temp,est has of late stripped the pe,tals away.' There's even more to this many-genred book--one to be lived with, in the urgency of its poetry, its philosophical and socio-political inquiry--font of brilliance that sustains vitally agonistic conversation across perilous divides."--Joan Retallack

"The Commodification of Everything. That was the pivot point of materialist discourse not even five years ago. But now, it's time to crack open the piths of the most fundamental doings of our species. After the sweeping tide of ethnonational victories currently sweeping the globe, The Weaponization of Everything, is not merely the 'speak' of The Now, but the do of all its subjects, whether collusive or rebellious. Judith Goldman's AGON is borne amidst this new reality. Few works of experimental literature aim so high as to flush out the full range affectual coordinates as to reveal their age's Agon as a controlling demigod of our own making, that is, to raise up the Agon's 'agon'."--Rodrigo Toscano

"Judith Goldman's AGON confronts the ubiquitous naturalization inherent in the weaponization of race, gender, global warming, poetics, language, utterance, politics, torture, immigr