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See Me Improving
Paperback
Series: Lannan Literary Selections
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ISBN13: 9781556593123
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Published: Dec 21 2010
Pages: 80
Weight: 0.30
Height: 0.30 Width: 5.90 Depth: 8.80
Language: English
Travis Nichols is a young poet and novelist who invites readers into a world of relationships gone strange. In his poems, everyday human behaviors become fraught with extraordinary significance. It's a delicate balance of orchestration and improvisation--both dizzying and oddly comforting. The poems, thick with vibrant language and semantic play, hint at a Rimbaudian derangement of the senses while being hyper-alert and completely alive.
All my life I've felt destined
not for the greatness of my heroes
but the goodness of their followers.
I knew, even when I found a piece
of tooth in my Sausage McMuffin,
I would surmount the poverty
and dullness of my youth.
I knew neither my poverty nor my youth
would be significant enough
to attract attention,
only simple enough
to graft onto the great biographies.
Even when I felt uncommon and angry enough
to steal balloons from the drug store
and spit red paintballs through a peashooter
at people making out in the park I knew
I was no Billy the Kid . . .
Travis Nichols is an editor at the Poetry Foundation. He is the author of Iowa, a collection of poems, and Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder (Coffee House Press), a novel. He edits the online magazine Weird Deer and regularly contributes to The Believer, Paste, and The Stranger. He lives in Chicago.
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