CRUCIAL SPRAWL HITS THE STREETS

YES.

As we were putting the final touches on Assembling the Lord, I began to wonder about the bounds of my ambitions. Excavating old prose and hammering out new verses felt, well, inspiring: after years away, I was a poet again. And as 2008 wound down, I resolved that 2009 would be devoted to another book of poetry. It’s title would be Stay Local, and therein I’d explore themes related - loosely and directly - to sustainability and entropy in my off-kilter lyrical voice, that boom-lowering sense in recent years of all things social and economic and personal drawing back for the sake of survival. Farmer’s markets over grocery chains, local bands over national pop heroes, etc. This felt like a capital idea, and one of the first poems I wrote for this collection is actually titled “Stay Local.” Then the downturn hit, and life soured, and the focus shifted further afield to fear, to dread, to discontent - and Stay Local became Crucial Sprawl, at first after the closing line of “The New Austerity” and later after a poem titled “Crucial Sprawl.” So consider this book a catalogue of apprehensions - everything falling apart without the benefits (usually) of rhyme - but be prepared for moments of tenderness and humor and wit, paeans to loved ones, cynical chortles, splashes of gruesome color. It’s the diary of an interesting year, one in which it seemed that I was perpetually on the verge of losing everything.

Go here to read some excerpts and/or buy a copy, if you're into that kinda thing.

Get your hot Crucial Sprawl samples, here.

Dropping the first week of October.

Crucial Sprawl feedback from one of my college English professors, Dr. Richard Gillin

"The poems are energized, intense, and demanding. I tried to hear your voice in them as I read, and the combination of my memory of your voice , its cadences, power, and irony in conjunction with the written poems helps to open them and to grasp at some of the threads that run through them. Sound dominates. There is a percussive run in many, and a lash in others. On the surface I sense irony, bewilderment at times, anger, sarcasm, and ultimately hope.  The core of what you present is a sensitive evocation of now. The country is increasingly moving in radical directions politically and culturally as people search for some sense of direction. Your poems capture the painful uncertainty  that comes with significant transitions, and they develop and ironic sense of desire to hold onto old myths or at least perceptions of order. On the one hand the old stories are seen for what they are, but their loss creates a vacuum.  The sense of hope and a will to make sense out of contemporary existence inheres in the most turbulent poems. So for all the shattering of the static and distractions of the moment you create a strong voice with a latent hope for something approaching meaning. Keep writing, and maintain your critical and sharp eye for those telling details."

Wanna download an mp3 of me reading some poems from my forthcoming book? Cop it here, at the very top of the page.

It's been 30-45 days since I've had the wherewithall and focus to complete a poem.

I'm probably due, right?

I've submitted some recent unpublished work to various literary magazines, though - hopefully something strikes someone's fancy, somewhere.

And: Crucial Sprawl is coming. Promise. Soon: save your pennies!

Get ready.

EPIGRAMS FOR CRUCIAL SPRAWL

“Kim hugs Dimitri, who doesn’t seem to notice or care, and he drops his guitar by his side and stares off into the pool and eleven or twelve of us stand out by the pool and someone turns the music down so that we can hear the sounds of the city celebrating, but there’s not a whole lot to hear and I keep looking into the living room, where Muriel’s lying on a couch, smoking a cigarette, sunglasses on, watching MTV.”
Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero

“Asters are purple, there‘s purple ink/Purple‘s more popular than you think…”
Mary O’Neill, Hailstones and Halibut Bones

“Redford?/I go rob/Creamed corn, no cob/Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, go sob/Your Saab?/Oh, God”
Cam’ron, “Silky”

"...and Prairie huddled down in back, hanging on, wishing they could wake into something more benevolent and be three different people, only some family in a family car, with no problems that couldn't be solved in half an hour of wisecracks and commercials, on their way to a fun weekend at some beach."
Thomas Pynchon, Vineland

“And silence is danger, but it’s not quiet here/So why you scared?”
Pavement, “Strings of Nashville”