Mere splatters of writing cannot keep pace with the events of these accelerated and hyperbolic times. But OBU somehow imagines the contours of broad ideological terrains with all their emotional flora and fauna. These manifestos give us the vision of Stevens’ “pensive man” and his eagle. But their Alps are melting, the eagle is working on his memoir, and the pensive man can’t find his keys. The OBU Manifes-tos provide the depressive utopianism that may guide us through and beyond the Trumpist wilderness.
Arthur Forest, author of The Whole Schmear: A History of the Big Picture
A triumph of expansive concision. The eyes of OBU are many, and each latches to some large small dismal comic facet of the hideous blotched crystal of the American cosmos of the Trumpian moment. Always turning, the Manifestos spot like spinning dancers. The goal is justice, kindness, racial and gender equality, an economy that sustains both people and planet… but what can keep balance when every surface is tilting? The Manifestos fall and slide. The miracle is that in their sliding they grasp so many true particulars.
Penelope Tree, author of Look at What’s There
The OBU Manifestos offers evidence of a poetic imagination at work, imagining in the best utopian fashion a world of human mutuality the direct obverse of the oligarchical nightmare into which we seem to be descending. If it can be imagined, then it can be — or ought to be — realized, and The OBU Manifestos is an advanced primer in turning imagination into reality.
Mark Scroggins, Jacket 2