Search results for ""Author Garrett Caples""

"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.

Read more less

In Lovers of Today, Garrett Caples is his most playful and heartfelt. Here are poems that generously place the reader in a particular poetic moment that is both elegiac and also wildly entertaining. Taken from a bar of the same name in New York City, Lovers of Today is a collection of poetry that pays tribute to friendships including Kevin Killian, John Ashbery, Joanne Kyger, and Bill Berkson, among others, wherein each poem is a celebration of life’s ephemerality.

Read more less

"I adore [Caples'] prescription to read widely and even perversely; and his breezy style is engaging." --Don Share "Caples' discussions are careful, nuanced, personal, and opinionated." --Steven Fama "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 "Caples supplies us with a full aesthetic meal, with alarming images right out of the French Surrealists. He also means what he says; regardless of any implications to the contrary, Caples is writing out of emotion, even well-done sentiment." --Rain Taxi From "Theory on Retrievals": The concept of the poet-critic has always been a compelling one to me; it's hard not to admire 19th century French poets like Gautier, writing elegant prose in newspapers on topics the general public was more interested in reading about than it was in reading his poetry. (I've never been one to hold the general public's lack of interest in poetry against it; that's the way of the world.) The compensation was that being a poet gave one a certain license as a critic to roam among all the arts. Retrievals is a book of essays written over the course of ten years about underrecognized poets, unfairly discredited critics, and artists obscured by more famous relations. Garrett Caples is the author of The Garrett Caples Reader (Angle Press/Black Square Editions, 1999), Complications (Meritage Press, 2007), and Quintessence of the Minor (Wave Books, 2010). He is the co-editor of The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia (University of California Press, 2013). He is the poetry editor at City Lights Books, and curates the Spotlight Poetry Series there. He has a PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and lives in Oakland.

Read more less

In Lovers of Today, Garrett Caples is his most playful and heartfelt. Here are poems that generously place the reader in a particular poetic moment that is both elegiac and also wildly entertaining. Taken from a bar of the same name in New York City, Lovers of Today is a collection of poetry that pays tribute to friendships including Kevin Killian, John Ashbery, Joanne Kyger, and Bill Berkson, among others, wherein each poem is a celebration of life’s ephemerality.

Read more less

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' 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.

Read more less

The final book of poems from a Beat Generation legend, Mule Kick Blues finds McClure restlessly innovating until the end."Intelligent, affable and flecked with unconventional typography—as in previous books … Mule Kick Blues is an estimable coda to a storied career."—San Francisco Chronicle"What a beautiful book. … I can’t think of any contemporary artist who explores the interior, the inside-out of the dharma as magically and freely as McClure except maybe for David Lynch. Were they friends?"—Eileen Myles"This legendary rockstar eco-poet’s gemlike modal structures will keep humming while 'black ants circle a bubble of honey.' A final performance from a master poet."—Anne Waldman"These pyramids and lozenges of crystal and light point in all directions and pierce you with the sobbing foghorn lobs of the ever-morphing ripples of the San Andreas Fault Ensemble. Long live McClure and the Libratonic Scales of Interspecies Justice!"—Filip Marinovich"His dedication to the pursuit of liberation in craft and subject matter reveals him to be a powerhouse of wisdom, love, joy. In this book, his ferocity and tenderness intertwine. Here are poems of improvisational intensity. And they are great gifts to us."—Uche NdukaA powerful collection of new work written during the last years of McClure's life, Mule Kick Blues was readied for publication before the poet's death in May 2020. Its opening section gives us a rare view into his thoughts about his own mortality, particularly in the moving sequence "Death Poems." The book takes its title from an innovative series of homages to blues musicians like Leadbelly and Howlin' Wolf, and evoking Kerouac’s concept of "blues" poems. Featuring shout-outs to lifelong friends like Philip Whalen, Diane di Prima, and Gary Snyder, the long poem "Fragments of Narcissus," and the eco-logical and zen-infused themes for which he is known, Mule Kick Blues is a definitive statement by one of the most significant American poets of the last sixty years. Introduction by poet Garrett Caples, McClure’s editor at City Lights.

Read more less

“A true poet of modern classic culture in mid-twentieth century U.S.A.”—Allen Ginsberg“At their best the poems have an intensely oral, I would like to call it glossolalic, freedom, as if they captured the essence of what one might like to express in the moment of rapture.”—David RattrayBeginning in the 1950s until his untimely death at age 49, Stephen Jonas (1921-1970) was an influential if underground figure of the New American Poetry. A gay African-American poet of self-obscured origins, heavily influenced by Ezra Pound and Charles Olson, the Boston-based Jonas was a pioneer of the serial poem and an erudite mentor to such acknowledged masters as Jack Spicer and John Wieners, even as he lived a shadowy existence among drug addicts, thieves, and hustlers.Arcana: A Stephen Jonas Reader is the first selection of his work to appear in 25 years. With a biographical introduction and a postscript delving into recent discoveries concerning the poet's birthplace and background, Arcana is a crucial corrective to our understanding of post-war American poetry, restoring Jonas to his rightful place among the period’s vanguard. Featuring previously uncollected and unpublished work, a section of never-before-seen facsimiles from notebooks, and a generous selection from his innovative serial poem Exercises for Ear (1968), Arcana is a much-needed retrieval of an overlooked American poet, as well as a valuable contribution to African American and Queer literature.Praise for Arcana:"The work of Steve Jonas, though vital to many of his more illustrious contemporaries, has remained obscured far too long, particularly as we've become unaccustomed to the high stakes once involved in the life of poetry. Accompanied by a reprint of Joseph Torra’s invaluable introduction, as vital and fresh now as when it came out 25 years ago, along with David Rich’s extraordinary archaeological dig into genealogical records and biographical materials to clarify Jonas’s self-effaced origins, the publication of Arcana is an important event in our increasingly evanescent cultural history, evidence of what is real."––Ammiel Alcalay

Read more less

Rediscover Joyce Mansour, the most significant Surrealist poet to emerge from 1950s Paris.“You know very well, Joyce, that you are for me—and very objectively too—the greatest poet of our time. Surrealist poetry, that’s you.”—André Breton Joyce Mansour, a Syrian Jewish exile from Egypt, was 25 years old when she published her first book in Paris in 1953. Her fierce, macabre, erotically charged works caught the eye of André Breton, who welcomed her into his Surrealist group and became her lifelong friend and ally. Despite her success in surrealist circles, her books received scant attention from the literary establishment, which is hardly surprising since Mansour's favorite topics happened to be two of society's greatest fears: death and unfettered female desire.Now, over half a century later, Mansour's time has come. Emerald Wounds collects her most important work, spanning the entire arc of her career, from the gothic, minimalist fragments of her first published work to the serpentine power of her poems of the 1980s. In fresh new translations, Mansour's voice surges forth uncensored and raw, communicating the frustrations, anger, and sadness of an intelligent, worldly woman who defies the constraints and oppression of a male-dominated society. Mansour is a poet the world needs today.

Read more less

The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia represents the lifework of the most visionary poet of the American postwar generation. Philip Lamantia (1927-2005) played a major role in shaping the poetics of both the Beat and the Surrealist movements in the United States. First mentored by the San Francisco poet Kenneth Rexroth, the teenage Lamantia also came to the attention of the French Surrealist leader André Breton, who, after reading Lamantia’s youthful work, hailed him as a “voice that rises once in a hundred years.” Later, Lamantia went “on the road” with Jack Kerouac and shared the stage with Allen Ginsberg at the famous Six Gallery reading in San Francisco, where Ginsburg first read “Howl.” Throughout his life, Lamantia sought to extend and renew the visionary tradition of Romanticism in a distinctly American vernacular, drawing on mystical lore and drug experience in the process. The Collected Poems gathers not only his published work but also an extensive selection of unpublished or uncollected work; the editors have also provided a biographical introduction.

Read more less

"The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia" represents the lifework of the most visionary poet of the American postwar generation. Philip Lamantia (1927-2005) played a major role in shaping the poetics of both the Beat and the Surrealist movements in the United States. First mentored by the San Francisco poet Kenneth Rexroth, the teenage Lamantia also came to the attention of the French Surrealist leader Andre Breton, who, after reading Lamantia's youthful work, hailed him as a "voice that rises once in a hundred years". Later, Lamantia went "on the road" with Jack Kerouac and shared the stage with Allen Ginsberg at the famous Six Gallery reading in San Francisco, where Ginsburg first read "Howl". Throughout his life, Lamantia sought to extend and renew the visionary tradition of Romanticism in a distinctly American vernacular, drawing on mystical lore and drug experience in the process. "The Collected Poems" gathers not only his published work but also an extensive selection of unpublished or uncollected work; the editors have also provided a biographical introduction.

Read more less

"Frank Lima is an American Villon."--David Shapiro "Highly recommended for -reasons that go beyond historical -completeness."--Library Journal, starred review "This collection is not to be missed."--Publishers Weekly, starred review Protege of Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, and Allen Ginsberg, Frank Lima (1939-2013) was the only Latino member of the New York School during its historical heyday. After enduring a difficult and violent childhood, he discovered poetry as an inmate of a juvenile drug treatment center under the tutelage of the painter, Sherman Drexler, who introduced him to his poet friends. After his poetry debut in the Evergreen Review in 1962, Lima appeared in key New York School anthologies and published two full-length collections of his own. In the late 1970s, Lima left the poetry world to pursue a successful career as a chef, though he returned intermittently and continued to write a poem a day until his death. Incidents of Travel in Poetry is a landmark re-introduction to the work of this major Latino poet. Beginning with poems from Inventory (1964), his installment in the legendary Tibor de Nagy poetry series, Incidents includes selections from Lima's previous volumes, tracing his development from his early snapshots of street life to his later surrealist-influenced abstract lyricism. The bulk of the collection comes from his later unpublished manuscripts, and thus Incidents represents the full range of Lima's work for the very first time. Praise for Incidents of Travel in Poetry: "Finally. Finally. Finally. Here's the Frank Lima collection that poetry lovers worldwide have been waiting for. Lima was an authentic outlier and Incidents of Travel transcends and decolonizes any attempt at easy categorization. With this new body of work, we are reaping the price Lima paid for being ostracized. Our reward? The dream we wish we could have, whispers that hint of a new waste land, and we'll always be in his debt for having Lima as a guide."--Willie Perdomo, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon. "Frank Lima is a masterful writer of ecstatic, devastating, and hauntingly personal poetry. His candor is irresistible and transformative, as cuttingly witty in one poem as elegiac and sorrowful in the next. Complete with its nuances and disappointments, nobody writes the poetry of domestic reverence quite like Lima. In this generous selection of work from the poet's life, including poetry from 1997 onward, we can finally solidify Lima as a figure of crucial importance to our understanding of the New York School writers. This work shines with all the love and labor of Lima's thoroughly American experience, one which is inextricable from the trauma of cultural duality. Lima's voice speaks to us like an intimate friend, a co-conspirator in hope. 'Blessed are the poets who invented us as poets,' he writes in a poem for David Shapiro, an ode to both his best friend and to poetry. Blessed are we now to have this landmark collection of work from Frank Lima. This book is a long overdue treasure." --Wendy Xu From his first contact with poetry while incarcerated as a juvenile offender in Harlem, through his meetings with Langston Hughes and Frank O'Hara, his years with Berkson and Padgett and Berrigan, his stint as a chef, and his years of living his Vow to Poetry when he wrote at least a poem a day in total obscurity--Lima's life is an epic of contradictions. Frank Lima is a poet the world has been waiting to discover. Now we can."--Bob Holman

Read more less