Promotional Information

Joseph Gastiger's new book is a loving, outrageous, krazy kat biography of the Vietnam generation hooked to the poet's imagination and his lifelong pursuit of the marvelous. Everything happens in these poems: the dead walk (or swim), Muammar Qaddafi says he did it all for love, the long lost political turmoil of the Nixon years reappears bristling with subtexts, Astro Boy is sold to a robotic circus, the poet/speaker wanders among his early loves and experiences like a burglar with flashlights taped to his shoes. Yet the poems, sweet and half comic as many of them are, are also deadly serious in their critique of the violence, ignorance, and anger that haunt every human community. The language throughout is quick, supple, heartbreaking and original in every way possible and provides a menu of startling possibilities for the prose poem form. Gastiger has given us a very fine gift. -- Christopher Howell, author of Dreamless and Possible

About the Author

Joseph Gastiger grew up in Westbury, a working class town on Long Island, attended SUNY Stony Brook and the University of Iowa, and did graduate work at Colorado State University where he was part of a cohort that included poets Yusef Komunyakaa, William Michael Ryan, Jay P. White and John Bradley. He received a PhD from Northern Illinois University, where he subsequently taught writing and literature for a number of years, and was coordinator of its Honors Program. His poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies, including Princeton Arts Review, Sycamore Review, TriQuarterly, New Voices: Poetry and Fiction from Colorado State University, Benchmark: Anthology of Contemporary Illinois Poetry, among others. His first book, Loose Talk, was published by Lost Horse Press in 2012. He lives with his wife in DeKalb, Illinois, where he is pastor of the First Congregational Church of Christ, and, as W.C. Williams said of himself, the happy genius of his household.

Reviews

Joseph Gastiger's new book is a loving, outrageous, krazy kat biography of the Vietnam generation hooked to the poet's imagination and his lifelong pursuit of the marvelous. Everything happens in these poems: the dead walk (or swim), Muammar Qaddafi says he did it all for love, the long lost political turmoil of the Nixon years reappears bristling with subtexts, Astro Boy is sold to a robotic circus, the poet/speaker wanders among his early loves and experiences like a burglar with flashlights taped to his shoes. Yet the poems, sweet and half comic as many of them are, are also deadly serious in their critique of the violence, ignorance, and anger that haunt every human community. The language throughout is quick, supple, heartbreaking and original in every way possible and provides a menu of startling possibilities for the prose poem form. Gastiger has given us a very fine gift." - Christopher Howell, author of Dreamless and Possible