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Description
Whether watching teens practice cheerleading in a surveillance video or discussing death with a shoe salesclerk, these poems ultimately find a certain joy and redemptive love. Wit and wry observation mark these disjointed narratives from an agile new voice.
About the Author
Pecqueur is a graduate of the University of Washington's creative writing program where he won the Academy of American Poets Harold Taylor Prize. His poems and critical reviews have appeared in such journals as American Letters & Commentary and Rain Taxi. He teaches Literary and Critical Studies at the Pratt Institute, and English at the City University of New York.
Jean-Paul Pecqueur is a poet who has, in truth, in actual landscapes and stunningly immediate circumstances, wrestled with an angel. And the fact that his very particular, very contemporary angel wears the shape of a bird's last breath and the elusive substance of human justice, troubles and delights me. These are poems of harrowing moment. — Donald Revell
Sardonic and humorous, cynical and complex, these metaphysical musings celebrate the nameless dread, the logic of the illogical. They address big ideas: life, death, heaven, shoe shopping. They twist and loop, follow to unexpected conclusions…. — Library Journal
The voice in these poems is real and familiar but has rarely been captured in poetry. Read carefully and follow. — American Poet
Pecqueur's brand of nonchalant sarcasm is a delight. — The Great American Pin-Up
Enthusiasms are to Researches as Day is to the Sublime
because they impose upon the desertscape
an anti-honorific qua transitory hue
because the stars are filled with entertainment news
because throughout the news the people flow
past the garden and alarm factories
past the sparrows and Sibeliuses
the motorcycles knife-fighting in the yard
past the tree cosseted with mockingbird charms
because the tree in question is the tree of life
because the tree in question has grown out its hair
the scent of orange blossom is everywhere
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