Passenger Ship (Ypolita, 2013)
“Note how quickly the content is “placed” on “stage.” This is not by any accident. Immediately we are in a play within a play. At the story level, which is a repurposing, a collage, and within the meta-argument of the entire book. These various frames widen out, like multiple mirrors, but with tricks in them.” —James Wagner
Although Passenger Ship was published in 2013, the poems were written between 1998 – 2000. Thank you to the generous and patient Carrie Hunter, editor and publisher at Ypolita, who waited five years after I first sent them to her, and then endured endless reorganizations and revisions before we finally put it out.
This chapbook is out of print. Contact me and I’ll send you one.
Read the whole of James Wagner’s astonishing and generous review here.
From Passenger Ship:
cheer up, don’t be lackadaisical and blue.
say goodbye cheerfully and bravely
show a manly front
and leave a pleasant memory behind you.
leave port in fair weather
you are captain you have a ship of your own
blue water under the keel
strand of red in it