"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.
Table of Contents:
AVID 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
About the Author :
Garrett Caples is the author of Retrievals (2014), The Garrett Caples Reader (1999), Complications (2007), and Quintessence of the Minor (2010). He is the co-editor of The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia (2013), Particulars of Place (2015) by Richard O. Moore, and Incidents of Travel in Poetry: New and Selected Poems (2016) 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 Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and lives in San Francisco.
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
