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Poetry with Kevin Killian & Rachel Loden

October 8, 2009 - 7:30pm

 

 

 

Thursday, October 8, 7:30 p.m.

My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer by Kevin Killian BUY NOW

 

In 1965, when the poet Jack Spicer died at the age of forty, he left behind a trunkful of papers and manuscripts and a few copies of the seven small books he had seen to press. A West Coast poet, his influence spanned the national literary scene of the 1950s and '60s, though in many ways Spicer's innovative writing ran counter to that of his contemporaries in the New York School and the West Coast Beat movement.

Now, more than forty years later, Spicer's voice is more compelling, insistent, and timely than ever. My Vocabulary Did This to Me is a landmark publication of this essential poet's life work, and includes poems that have become increasingly hard to find and many published here for the first time. 

 

 

 

Dick of the Dead by Rachel Loden  BUY NOW

 

Dick of the Dead is an investigation into American sexual and political consciousness, and at its eccentric heart lies the undead and uneasy 37th president of the United States, Richard M. Nixon. Loden's Nixon is never merely the consummate villain deplored by his critics nor the tragic visionary statesman acclaimed by his apologists. He is nearly a force of nature: ready to smash death by any means necessary, to beat back a sea of pretenders and retake Washington by storm. Dick of the Dead is a trip through the underworld of the American psyche, much funnier and ultimately much more serious than any one book of poems has a right to be.

Rachel Loden is the author of Hotel Imperium, which won the Contemporary Poetry Series Competition of the University of Georgia Press and was named one of the ten best poetry books of the year by The San Francisco Chronicle.

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