In Kim Dower's fourth collection, Sunbathing on Tyrone Power's Grave, death has never felt so alive! Alluring titles to haunting last lines, the poems in Dower's fourth collection soothe, terrify, and always surprise, revealing the extraordinary within the ordinary.
Acclaimed for combining the accessible and profound, humor and heartache, Dower's poetry continues to be quirky, dark, sexy, disarmingly candid, and moving, and here she explores the landscape of death and its intersections with love, longing, obsession, sadness, joy, and beauty. Wise and soaring, these poems bravely imagine another life beyond the one we all know where even the angels surrounding the graves are wearing bikinis, smoking Kool Lights.
About the Author :
Kim Dower grew up in New York City and received a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, where she also taught before moving to Los Angeles. Former City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood, Kim has published four collections of poetry, all with Red Hen Press: Air Kissing on Mars, which was on the Poetry Foundation’s Contemporary Best Sellers list and described by the Los Angeles Times as, “sensual and evocative . . . seamlessly combining humor and heartache,” Slice of Moon, called “unexpected and sublime,” by “O” magazine, Last Train to the Missing Planet, “poems that speak about the grey space between tragedy and tenderness, memory and loss, fragility and perseverance,” said Richard Blanco, and her brand new Sunbathing on Tyrone Power’s Grave, which Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick, calls exuberant, sexy and sobering.” Nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, Kim’s work has been featured in Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac," and Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry,” as well as in Ploughshares, Barrow Street, and Rattle. Her poems are included in several anthologies, notably, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, (Beyond Baroque Books/Pacific Coast Poetry Series,) and Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes & Shifts of Los Angeles, (Tia Chucha Press.) She teaches Poetry and Memory in the B.A. Program of Antioch University. She is also the proud founder of Kim-from-L.A. a well-known literary marketing and publicity company that helps writers get their beautiful words out into the world.
Review :
“Bold and sexy and smart.” —Stephen Dunn
"By turns exuberant, sexy and sobering, Kim Dower’s remarkable poems are known for their extraordinary range. This fourth collection finds her at the top of her game. Attuned to the oddness of the quotidian and grounding the metaphysical in the sharp sensations of daily life, the poems in Sunbathing on Tyrone Power’s Grave invite us to live as fully and generously as the poet herself." —Chris Kraus, bestselling author of I Love Dick and After Kathy Acker
"Kim Dower['s] poetry is stunning." —John Mutter, founder of Shelf Awareness
"Provocative and richly rewarding poetry." —Jonathan Kirsch, Jewish Journal Review
"Kim Dower’s poetry has a way of transforming everyday life into something luminous and unexpected. Simultaneously accessible and complex, whimsical and heartbreaking, Dower’s poetry shines with subtle irony and playful imagination, written in a way that is empathetic and relatable, as well as full of wisdom. Something about Kim Dower’s poetry always seems trustworthy." —Culture Trip
“Unexpected and sublime.” —O Magazine on Slice of Moon
