Description
Book Synopsis"Thom Gunn, Barbara Guest, Robert Creeley, Philip Lamantia, all ghosts now, are invoked without sentiment and with plenty of wry humor." --Kevin Killian, Attention Span A power ballad was a hair metal band's voyage into the softer side of rock, compromising to the integrity of the genre, but genuine and trailblazing. So too is Caples's Power Ballads. His poems and prose pieces are bizarre and hilarious, in which Dylan and Bowie sit alongside the French surrealists, with the occasional turn into heartfelt romanticism. From "Garrett Caples Rides Again": my concealed carry personality has deformed my trouser content to the extent my permit permits i'm shooting off often in public i'm a blow dart in a wind tunnel aimed in the wrong direction a boycotted russian vodka distiller an assdial away from arrest Garrett Caples is the author of the essay collection Retrievals, two books of poetry, The Garrett Caples Reader, Complications, and the pamphlet Quintessence of the Minor. He is the co-editor of The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia, Particulars of Place by Richard O. Moore, and Incidents of Travel in Poetry: New and Selected Poems by Frank Lima. He is an editor at City Lights Books and curates the Spotlight Poetry Series there. He was also a contributing writer to the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He has written articles and blogged for the Poetry Foundation and occasionally blogs for blogcitylights.com. He has a PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley and lives in San Francisco.
Trade Review"Caples is part of a younger generation of writers reinvigorating contemporary poetry by combining modernist and Language-poetic verbal angularity with the sheer enthusiasm and lustiness of adolescence." --Publishers Weekly "Thom Gunn, Barbara Guest, Robert Creeley, Philip Lamantia, all ghosts now, are invoked without sentiment and with plenty of wry humor. " --Kevin Killian, Attention Span "When a work is unburdened of its own need for manufacture, it takes flight...It is this quality of complication, this soaring aloft in contemplation and play of the world in its multiple forms that appears most salient in Caples' work." --John Olson, Galatea Resurrects "Caples bends, twists and jumps through images and voices, but manages to maintain a sense of narrative and narration, however indeterminate. Far from being a mere collection of ironic syntactical collisions, this mode of his poetry, while often ironic and funny, coheres as it advances." --Brian Strang, Verse Magazine
Table of ContentsAVID DIVA HYPNAGOGIC BOSTON PAUL SCHEERBART LOVE IS MADE OF SKY THE CHOSEN THE HYDROPATHIC WAY CHIEFLY ROAD SONG FOR JUAN & THE PINES RICHARD O. MOORE IMAGINED AS A BOB DYLAN SONG LOST POEM HOMAGE TO ROD ROLAND DARK CANDLE FEEL MY PAIN MY BLACK DIARY GARRETT CAPLES RIDES AGAIN BLAP OAKLAND NOD OFTEN MARGIN OF TERROR AMERICA THE POEM TRIUMPH OF THE WILLING PARABLE GUT OF BRANDO SELF-PORTRAIT AS DAVID LETTERMAN PAUL BOWLES IN EL CERRITO SELF-PORTRAIT AS JAMES BOND ZEN OF NEZ TRACTATUS TEN TEN-LINE POEMS FOR PHILIP LAMANTIA THE CANTOS, THEN TACOS CELTIC LOVE SONG FOR SUZANNE
