this abattoir is a college

The modern university is a factory that transforms knowledge workers into carcasses. We are cattle primed for the slaughter. Part poem and part poet's novel, this abattoir is a college explores the hostile demands that higher education places upon capitalised bodies, upon students and faculty, whose common purposes are now brittle and pointless. If these institutions will never love you back, Tierney asks: can the knowledge worker foster a different collegial monster? Burn down the classroom, the poem replies, we can build an unreasonable college. 

"Like a flower dropped on a bomb, Orchid uses her faculties to cut a window in the brick. After carefully reading this book, here is your assignment: practice saying "no." Let this no be sung in operatic tones, wear it like the lastest festive seasonal fashion or dance it like the grooviest moves on TikTok. Nooooo. Institute it."

-Jennifer Firestone, author of Story

"If you liked this movie, you might also like Julian Spahr's The Tranformation, Jed Rasula's This Compost: Ecological Imperatives in American Poetry, Caroline Bergvall's Drift, Lytle Shaw's Fieldworks, Karl Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, and Samuel R. Delaney's Dhalgren."

-Charles Bernstein, author of The Kinds of Poetry I Want: Essays & Comedies