Humans
- Gregory Crosby (author)
- Elæ Moss (artist)
ISBN
978-1-946031-33-4
LCCN
2018948570
Page count
142
Keywords
Poetry, Prose, Couplets, Elegy, In Memoriam, In Memory, Politics, Crisis, Culture, Love, Relationships, America, United States, US, USA
Publication date
2018
Language(s)
English
Publication media type
Print Document
Publication series
Unlimited Editions
Walking Away From Explosions In Slow Motion
“Gregory Crosby’s poetry matches an extensive knowledge of literary form with a curator’s eye for the idiosyncrasies of our popular culture. He zooms in on familiar scenes of contemporary life — ‘Lonely Starbucks Lovers,’ ‘Netflix & Chill.’ He writes elegant elegies for David Bowie and Adam West. Here is a poet who is able to compose in the midst of chaos, refusing to resort to the easy narratives that make sense of it all. This allows his work to embrace a democratic range of experiences from the political to the banal. Crosby can’t help being engaged, often satiric, but always sincere; he wonders, ‘How to say something to see something. / How to give voice to despair without/ giving in to despair.’ Walking Away From Explosions in Slow Motion is a poetic survival manual — a guide for navigating a maze of contradictions. It’s a must read!” — Elaine Equi
Walking Away From Explosions in Slow Motion is just that — the thoughts that arise as you turn your back on whatever catastrophe of air and light is blossoming in your wake and press forward as best you can, the roar in your ears turning somehow into poetry. Among the shrapnel: time, mortality, culture, dead twins, funeral strippers, lonely Starbucks lovers, apocalyptic elections, ennui, extended plays, injustice, aubades, Pluto, sex, loneliness, Bowie, Batman, strange dreams, reading comics by flashlight, democracy in ruins, racism, hope, melancholy, masks, pierced tongues, lost souls, scarecrows, violence, love, American twilights & resistance, resistance, (nevertheless) resistance. Also a dog, barking in the distance.
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About the Contributor(s)
Gregory Crosby is the author of the chapbooks Spooky Action at a Distance (2014, The Operating System) and The Book of Thirteen (2016, Yes Poetry); his poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Court Green, Epiphany, Copper Nickel, Leveler, Sink Review, Ping Pong, & Hyperallergic. In 2002, as a poetry consultant to the City of Las Vegas, he was instrumental in the creation of the Lewis Avenue Poets Bridge, a public art project in downtown Las Vegas. His dedicatory poem for the project, "The Long Shot," was subsequently reproduced in bronze and installed in the park, and was included in the 2008 anthology Literary Nevada: Writings from the Silver State (University of Nevada Press). He teaches creative writing at Lehman College, City University of New York.
Follow Gregory Crosby on Twitter @monostich.
Elæ Moss is a multimodal artist-researcher, curator, designer, and educator. Seeking Speculative Solidarities, they employ analog and digital media to investigate human, institutional and ecological systems and to iterate open source strategies for ecological and social change. Recent projects have shown at La Mama Galleria, EFA Project Space, STWST/Ars Electronica, Usdan Gallery, Judson Church, the Segal Center, SOHO20, Dixon Place, and the Exponential Festival, among others. Select publications include Big Echo, Tagvverk, Vestiges, Matters of Feminist Practice, The Transgender Narratives Anthology, Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, The Brooklyn Poets Anthology, and Resist Much, Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance. Books include Ground, Blood Altas, Overview Effect, Sweet and Low: Indefinite Singular, Bodies of Work, and The Precarity Bodyhacking Work-Book and Guide. Moss is a Professor at Pratt Institute, and the developer / founder of the Operating System + Liminal Lab. More at: https://onlywhatican.net and https://theoperatingsystem.org.
