May 16 5PM: My guest will be "Hanging Loose Press" editor Mark Pawlak. Pawlak has a new book out:
OFFICIAL VERSIONS
This is Mark Pawlak’s fifth poetry collection, the other most recent titles being Special Handling: Newspaper Poems New and Selected and All the News. His poetry and prose have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2006 (Billy Collins, ed.), New American Writing, Off the Coast, Pemmican, and The Saint Ann’s Review, among other places. In addition, he is editor of four anthologies, most recently, Present/Tense: Poets in the World, a collection of contemporary American political poetry, featuring work from some of the country’s best-known writers. Pawlak is Director of Academic Support Programs at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he also teaches mathematics. He has been the recipient of two Massachusetts Artist Fellowship awards. He lives in Cambridge with his wife and his teenage son.
"Mark Pawlak...reminds me of a lyrical "junk," man-and I mean this in the best sense of the word. He collects phrases, archaic songs, ephemera from the past, and makes a strong poetic statement....Pawlak has a very quirky, engaging and unique style. Recommended."--Doug Holder, Boston Area Small Press Poetry Scene Read the full article>>
“Mark Pawlak’s poems document a literary journey charged with the sheer joy of words and often with fierce irony. He finds poetry in day-to-day common language, and makes his poems from snippets of remembered conversation and comment, from restaurant serving mats, the phone book and, most pointedly, from the news. Pawlak’s sophisticated use of irony allows him to precisely slice through governmental double-talk and the slanted reportage of our time to expose the contradictions, errors and lies inherent in the rhetoric of power brokers and political spin doctors. He is our most politically conscious poet and, as such, puts conscience back into poetry where it is sorely needed.” -—Michael Basinski, Curator, The Poetry Room, SUNY Buffalo
“Narrative? Kind of. Lyric? Sort of. Mark Pawlak takes his own versions (found and otherwise) and has turned them inside-out to celebrate how insane and touching language can be: from ‘perks’ to ‘Pappa Oom Mow Mow’—go on and shake it, baby!”—Kimiko Hahn
Praise for Mark Pawlak’s previous books:
SPECIAL HANDLING: NEWSPAPER POEMS NEW AND SELECTED“At a time when many Americans are too demoralized or too confused, as Gore Vidal says, to remember anything past last Tuesday, Pawlak names things accurately, jogs our memory and sharpens our wit.”—Michael True, Worcester Magazine
“Poetry and politics do mix—rather like nitrogen and glycerin—in Mark Pawlak’s explosive verse.” -—Kristin Aronson
ALL THE NEWS“It is wonderful to find a book as serious and witty as this…one of the best of the year and of the times.”—Thomas McGrath