Guernica Editions

In a spectacular display of irony, Keith Garebian slyly compliments some of the most powerful public figures in the United States – politicians, judges, evangelists, feminists, and media tycoons – onto this brightly lit stage and exposes them to well deserved ridicule. Adopting Alexander Pope’s strategy, Praise undeserv’d is scandal in disguise, he sets up his victims for self-immolation by heaping hyperbolic praise on them and then lets them commit verbal hara-kiri. Tongue in cheek and with a dead-pan posture, he treats their ignorant, bigoted, often illiterate pronouncements with the utmost respect as poems, arranging them on the page accordingly and commenting on their fine literary skills and profound insights. This is a hilarious romp through the upper echelons of American society, that takes aim with trenchant wit at such luminaries as George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, Tom Cruise, Jerry Falwell, Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump, Rick Santorum and Ann Coulter – all of them Republican right-wingers of various stripes.

Accidental Genius is both wickedly clever and frightening. Using the tongue-in-cheek persona of a droll scholar/critic, Garebian takes the bafflegab of U.S. politicians, reality stars, pundits and the like, transfigures it into (faux) poetry to show, all too clearly, just “... where the Renaissance has led to ...”