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May 2014 Issue [Criticism]

Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives

A poet’s guide to metal

In the beginning, William Blake writes a gonzo mythopoeia called Milton:

All that can be annihilated must be annihilated
That the Children of Jerusalem may be saved from slavery
There is a Negation, & there is a Contrary
The Negation must be destroyd to redeem the Contraries
The Negation is the Spectre; the Reasoning Power in Man
This is a false Body: an Incrustation over my Immortal
Spirit; a Selfhood, which must be put off & annihilated alway

In another beginning, a bunch of working-class drug users detune their guitars and add some horror-flick spookiness to the…

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is the author of the poetry collections Alien vs. Predator (2012) and The Second Sex, which will be published this fall by Penguin.

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