The Stuff of Hollywood

<span><b><span>In </span><span><i>The Stuff of Hollywood</i></span><span>, the camera is both a witness of truths and an instrument capturing the line between real and engineered violence.</span></b></span><p><span><span><i>The Stuff of Hollywood</i> </span><span>is a meditation on the pervasiveness of violence in America. </span><span>In this book-length poem, Niki Herd relies on various modes—images, prose, lyric and documentary poems—to reflect upon the quotidian nature of gun culture, police killings, and political unrest. A busy Waffle House, a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, inside an Uber on a Chicago street, readers are placed in various “film” locations and watch as America becomes a character in its own absurd movie. In one section, excerpted language from the continuity script of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 </span><span><i>The Birth of a Nation</i> </span><span>is juxtaposed with text from the January 6 congressional hearings, suggesting a fragile line between real and engineered brutality.</span><span> </span><span>Herd interrogates empire and the ways in which violence is consumed and normalized. </span><span><i>The Stuff of Hollywood</i></span><span> is an elegy for a country that never existed beyond the screen.</span></span><span><b><span><br></span></b></span></p>