Neutral

NEUTRAL is a one hundred twenty page open-field poem, extending the format/technique used in Shute's previous poetry books TWO SELF-PORTRAITS (After Murillo), COMPLEMENTARY ANGLES, TOMORROW WON'T BRING THE RAIN, and RIVERSIDE FUGUE. NEUTRAL is a more expansive work than those, presented on a larger canvas, influenced by the minimal approach of poet Frank Samperi and composer Jürg Frey, along with the diptych paintings of Andy Warhol. Shute's work is rooted in the post-Projective Verse poetics of Blackburn, Berrigan, and Eigner, but completely his own. The poetry echoes his work with such avant-garde musician-composers as Derek Rogers, Mari Rubio (aka More Eaze) and Alfred 23 Harth, while being steeped in the culture and particulars of the present-day Gulf Coast and South-Central Texas. The book's epigraph comes from composer Morton Feldman, "silence is my substitute for counterpoint." A career-spanning Selected Poems, Junk Sculpture From The New Gilded Age, was published by Moloko Print in Germany in late 2021.