Static Strut

STATIC STRUT is a one hundred page open-field poem, extending the format/technique used in Shute's previous poetry books NEUTRAL, TWO SELF-PORTRAITS (After Murillo), COMPLEMENTARY ANGLES, TOMORROW WON'T BRING THE RAIN, and RIVERSIDE FUGUE. STATIC STRUT is an expansive work, presented on a large 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 Rambutan, 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. In 2023, Shute and Albany-based musician RAMBUTAN released a collaborative music-and-poetry album BRIDGE ON THE BAYOU, available on the Tape Drift label.