Monkey Puzzle Magazine

MPP has three new books now available!

The Aftermath, etc. by Get in the car, Helen

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Here’s what people are saying about The Aftermath, etc.:

“In The Aftermath, etc., poet Rob Geisen (writing as Get in the car, Helen) mounts an astoundingly affectionate all-out assault on heterosexual male grief and loss and does so in a way that draws upon an array of comedic surreal phanopoetic vernacular traditions. Amped up by accurate, lyric, mass media hysterics as well as a naked, private despair, this series of poems to/of ‘Helen’ simultaneously appear as glittery and vapid as an extended Geico commercial, yet as rich and transformative as the ‘idiot’ Trungpas of the Mishap Lineage.”

- Jim Cohn, author of The Ongoing Saga I Told My Daughter

“The Aftermath, etc. goes after the topic of romantic love with a meat cleaver and a machete. It takes no prisoners and allows no quarter. Get in the car, Helen is unabashedly honest and open with a life chiseled out from the pain of a broken heart and life. What’s left is raw, exposed flesh. Something true, real, and dangerous lurks within these poems in a time when it does not pay to show your rage or sorrow or to be dangerous. Get in the car, Helen even manages to squeeze blood from a stone in the form of laughter over broken bits of memories that used to be a heart. There is immense beauty within his use of language, complex nuance within his metaphors, and the hidden wisdom of the hurt locked inside the tragedy of the story. With pop culture in one holster and righteous rage in the other, Get in the car, Helen shoots for the reader’s hearts as well as guts, but even in the midst of all the thrashing and excrement, one thing remains absolutely clear—this book was written because of love, for love, and in remembrance of love.”

- Olatundji Akpo-Sani, of Baobob Tree Press

“A cacophony of analogy, pop-culture wit and illustrative word-craftery where the words ‘vagina,’ ‘cheeseburger’ and ‘gobble’ can exist in the same sentence. The Aftermath, etc. is a rare look at the broken man in his natural environment: a wasteland of pizza, shark flicks, porn and beer. Seemingly, his only escape is through the pen, and if it were not so, the fine art of handmade explosives. No one can make me chuckle-and-puke-a-little-in-my-mouth-at-the-same-time quite like Get in the car, Helen.”

- Andi Todaro, author of Why My Penis Is Bigger Than Yours

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Product Details
Paperback: 104 pages / Poetry
Published: May 2010
ISBN-10: 0-9826646-2-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-9826646-2-9

Cold Instant by Jack Collom

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Here’s what people are saying about Cold Instant:

“For only a very few of us, making poems is as natural, as inborn, as breathing. Jack Collom is such a poet. In Cold Instant, Collom once again grabs his spirit lollipop, puts on his Captain Rainbow smile, and brings us to ‘poetry’s perch upon the moment’s ledge.’ Collom has told us before that ecology is ‘everything’ and his poetry never fails to partake of the ‘radiantly verdant ramifications’ of that everything to which he bears witness so keenly. These poems bring it all together–’profusion, extravagance/ ‘invisibility’/ holiness’– proving that ‘each tiny direction’s a universe.’ Collom capers with the joy and earnestness of a kid within his wild poetic traceries. His gift to us is to demonstrate that play is the form of wisdom we most urgently need.”

- Elizabeth Robinson, author of The Orphan and Its Relations

“With Cold Instant, Jack Collom offers a compendium of recent poetic proclivities and favored shapes, including the sonnet, the slice, the lune, the perfect daily account, and the acrostic, all with ubiquitous variation and permutation. Surprises here for everyone who loves and studies art: ‘particular things/ Begin to mouse-rush in the domestic box./ So thought’s a gardener, crazy like a fox.’

- Reed Bye, author of Join the Planets

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Payment can also be made by check payable to Monkey Puzzle Press. For mail order info, please visit our Contact Page.

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Product Details
Paperback: 86 pages / Poetry Hybrid
Published: May 2010
ISBN-10: 0-9826646-0-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-9826646-0-5

expired Rx by brandon arthur

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Here’s what people are saying about expired Rx:

“Brandon Arthur has the uncanny gift to be both Personist (see Frank O’Hara) and Archetypal (see Robert Duncan) in his works. Looking OUT at the phenomenal, looking IN at the possibly even more phenomenal (but not immediately accessible to others), his poems truly ‘own’ their sound/vision/intelligence. expired Rx is a book unlikely to expire in the coming millennia (given, of course, the survival of writing).”

- Anselm Hollo, author of Guests of Space

“Brandon Arthur says ‘gravity.’ He says ‘run your finger along the grain.’ It’s the weight & texture of a good particular poem he’s referring to. These poems of his sure have grain to them, American grain, & they have gravity. First the vocabulary catches you. Then notice the ambiguity, how it opens an influence that is magical, even spiritual. A physical space for the unknown & uncertain to enter your life.”

- Andrew Schelling, author of Old Tale Road

“expired Rx is a cure for poetic disorders. A remedy for prescribed notions of viewing the quotidian. These poems understand how the ‘street rain became horizontal’ and how ‘an iris cranes to the sun.’ Brandon Arthur navigates the interstices of language and sound: a lattice of ‘disruptive landscape’ against the backdrop of ‘proverbial…shade.’ In an evening that resembles ‘something like loss,’ expired Rx hones our senses, then renders a new world.”

- Michelle Naka Pierce, author of Beloved Integer

“In the poems of Brandon Arthur’s expired Rx, words and lines are accordion-jointed and expand and contract to each other, sometimes kaleidoscopically, in tumbling observations, sometimes clipped in dialogic bits of exchange. Though pacing and rhythmic action vary, this is a writing of quick-draw observations on syllable-tight timing, and life is sensed in the movement: a delight of active poetry.”

- Reed Bye, author of Join the Planets

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Payment can also be made by check payable to Monkey Puzzle Press. For mail order info, please visit our Contact Page.

To order from Amazon.com, click here: expired Rx

Product Details
Paperback: 70 pages / Poetry
Published: May 2010
ISBN-10: 0-9826646-4-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-9826646-4-3