The latest edition of Word Riot is out, and a review caught my eye because of the title of the book: We Swallow(ed) Spiders In Our Sleep. The book is a collection of poems by Zachary C. Bush, and you can read the review here, which includes a few excerpts. I gather that the reviewer, Christopher Cunningham, is a bit of a poet himself, judging from the opening sentence of his article:
“Zachary C. Bush’s hallucinatory poems, riddled with unexpected word choices, strong images, the occasional foray into surrealism and the razor edges of a hard young life being lived are the songs of an adventurous poet determined to squeeze each drop of lyrical imagination from the sun-burned, needle-pricked, aching skin of existence.”
Wow. If I ever manage to get a collection of my own poetry together, I’ll have to remember to send a copy to him for review.
Unfortunately, like most poetry chapbooks, it’s not available on mass market sites like amazon.com. The book is published by Pudding House Publications, but is not listed on their early 90’s-style webpage either (frames? really??) for some reason. The author advises in his blog to contact Jen@puddinghouse.com to order a copy.
Following are pieces of poems I found by Bush in online magazines. I’m not sure if these poems are published in his book or not, but these should give you a feel for his writing style. The first excerpt is from Expelling Angels(s) as published in The CommonLine Project:
Love was spending Sunday
Mornings in bed wrapped in you,
Laughing at the weeping angels
Blanket curled, leaned against
The grey brick corner of my mind, holding
Soggy cardboard signs that read:[Will Work for Some Pity]
And this one is from a poem called 18. as published on the cleverly named site, Unlikely 2.0.
Blindfold her tight, not to allow light.
Strip her slowly.
Lay her on granite couches clothed in velvet.
Tie her limbs with maroon sash.
Offer her drinks flavored with peppermint and sweat.
I will be keeping my eye on this talented writer and also keeping my fingers crossed that his next book is a little easier to get my hands on.
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[…] and coincidentally, the current issue also features a poem by Zachary Bush who was just featured in a recent post here at A Bunch of Wordz. The poem is called My First Week at the Boys Boarding […]
Hello, author of . Thank you for the promo bit… still not sure who you are? Pudding House is one of the largest Indie chapbook publishers (and I think they printed a few hundred copies of Spiders…they stay real busy and can’t always update page- so, just email Jennifer Bosveld and she will hook you up on price and shipping. I am actually the author of 4 chaps (in 2007)…and 1 more coming out in 08. Most of that info….you can find on google under my name. But if you’d like to contact me- please do!!
: readezra@yahoo.com.
Cheers,
ZCB
Hi, Zach. My name is Edie, and you can read some of my own poetry in the “Edie Montgomery-Pool” category on this site if you’re interested (https://abunchofwordz.wordpress.com/category/edie-montgomery-pool/) or see what the purpose of this site is on the About page (https://abunchofwordz.wordpress.com/about/). I didn’t know you had so many chapbooks out — I’ll definitely look those up. Thanks for the info.
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