Exile Books launches their two most recent titles, BORA BORA BORA, a book of poems by Daniel Feinberg, and Orange Oratory, an artists’ book by Amanda Keeley.

BORA BORA BORA is the first poetry collection from Feinberg. A book of experimental and mimetic fantasies, as well as the author’s everyday, almost confessional, Miami: the beach, the sun, the moon, nightclubs and nothingness, eros and emptiness. Feinberg crafts a language to observe an ecology where the coexistence of endless desire and inevitable disappearance reaches a metaphysical apotheosis in the romantic lyric. Through poetry, prose poetry, and science fiction, BORA BORA BORA approaches a multitude of subjects and subjectivities while always returning to and repeating the landscape’s elemental forces. Wavering between contemporary Miami hip hop and radical French philosophy, transgender activism and environmentalist nihilism, from rented Lamborghinis to Rimbaud’s drunken boat, from new desert Jewish mysticism to ennui African cyber noir, these are the dreams and nightmares of Floridian late capital. Through beauty to liquidation, BORA BORA BORA is a book that says, poetry is powerless / like a spa / love is unreal / it is outer space / like the sun or the moon / on my obsidian breasts / yes my magnificent breasts / and the heart in dull disdain / floods this tourist trap / earth with our tears / i know i know pix / or it didn’t exist. Here is a collection of pictures, of visions, of poems to prove that inexistence can be as meaningful as its shadow.

Orange Oratory was inspired by a 1939 Miami Herald article announcing the opening of the 27th Avenue Bridge over the Miami River. Headlined “Fruit Juice and Oratory to Feature Span Opening,” the article detailed organizers’ choice of fresh-squeezed orange juice—a signature South Florida thirst quencher—to toast the new architectural landmark with city officials and the Miami community. The original Bridge Tender House was acquired by the Wolfsonian—FIU in the 1980s and is now installed at the front of the museum. After going through the Wolfsonian archives, Keeley selected items that don’t normally appear on view to the public to highlight the unusual and eclectic nature of the Wolfsonian collection. The selected pieces thematically link to the color orange; South Florida’s history as an exotic, tropical, tourist destination; and the citrus industry. While working with designer Richard Massey in creating this artist book, the pieces have been organized using an algorithm dictated by the orange color spectrum. Orange Oratory is also part of a greater, virtual exhibition and neon orange sculpture by Keeley that commemorates the project and hangs in the Bridge Tender House.