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“The Stupefying Flashbulbs, winner of the 2006 Fence Modern Poets Series, is one of the best poetry books this year in the way that it demonstrates a poet comfortable scribbling on the walls in a world of his own. Daniel Brenner doesn’t give us total access to his world, but he lets us know it exists, and that’s enough. If he were too forthcoming, satellite spies might intercept and translate his code.
…In each of these small poems, there’s the sense that something’s chasing every one of us, be it government, a lover, an evil cube, fate, or anything in between. ‘We all make mistakes,’ Brenner’s able to conclude in a moment of lucidity, perhaps nodding that no matter how much you want to hide, as long as you’re not dead, you have to respond to the world in some form. As a price for being alive, something’s always bearing down on you, there are always more mistakes to be made. In the end, his fear is finally transmitted: ‘I’m afraid of looking back from the perspective of being chased / & doing whatever it is that the perspective of being chased urges.’”
—John Deming, www.coldfrontmag.com
Winner of the 2006 Fence Modern Poets Series
If one has grown tired of the ambition, naked and bleating, on display in many recent first books of poetry, then one will welcome the concussive impact of Daniel Brenner's The Stupefying Flashbulbs. These are short, occasion-stained lyrics, im- rather than compulsive, by turns insouciant and pregnable. Their pretensions are few, their presumptions, endearing. Thematic preoccupations include severity, inconclusiveness, and artistry. An evil cube makes repeat appearances. We all laugh last.
Endorsements:
“The Stupefying Flashbulbs plays like symbolist fantasy, or mad monologue, or a diary of personal and farfetched dramas surfacing into ordinary life. New words demand invention to describe moments missing from language.” —Thalia Field
Click here for TABLE OF CONTENTS
From the Book:
Our Lane Leader
Our lane leader is blue and we cry to him in books
Cool she's back from the unicorns I thought &
I saw her in the hillside heel-deep in a gore slough
Puzzled beside the car in Germany cursing at the light
As I tried to hold 3 umbrellas above (Aliens crackle)
The star-maker stable-master who pours a 2-liter bottle
The restaurant check-out wheels spin out alienation
Spies sulk nearby trying out their acting gigs
The cadre's oncoming lights & Spanish horses
The vampire girls are everywhere in the gore slough
They are everywhere the ponies bristle at their food
They are on the nation in soaring clusters around
Our lane leader blue like the pills lazy mommies take
Glhao up fa the dark leader 1/2 roared get to work
& all of his UZI followers flickered in and out of wanting
Those three cinnamon things flickering out there
In front of the cables with the bittersweet cool
Awards/Recognition:
Fence Modern Poets Series 2006
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DANIEL BRENNER was born near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1976. He currently lives in New Jersey and works as an independent contractor.
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