Bill Shute

Riverside Fugue Bill Shute

RIVERSIDE FUGUE is a sixty page open-field poem by San Antonio poet BILL SHUTE, composed in Texas and Louisiana in the Summer of 2018. Shute's work is rooted in the post-Projective Verse poetics of Blackburn, Berrigan, and Eigner, but completely his own. The title of one of his spoken-word poetry albums sums up his approach: Junk Sculpture From The New Gilded Age. The poetry echoes his work with such avant-garde musician-composers as Derek Rogers, Marcus Rubio (aka More Eaze) and Alfred 23 Harth, while being steeped in the culture and particulars of the present-day Gulf Coast. The book's epigraphs come from composer Morton Feldman, "silence is my substitute for counterpoint," and from visual artist Dorothy Hood, whose work inspired elements of the poem. A career-spanning Selected Poems will be published by Moloko Print in Germany in 2020.