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The Ghost-Star King
Paperback
Publisher Price: $19.00
ISBN13: 9781944585983
Publisher: Word Works
Published: May 1 2026
Pages: 72
Weight: 0.31
Height: 0.20 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Poetry. Timeless, teasing, mock-magnificent, and yet dead serious, Tavel's collection of prose poems about the tangled life of the contemporary American male pulls the reader (amazed, dazed, delighted) from page to page at high speed. It's true: you'll laugh, you'll cry, and on every page your mind will bind with his as he howls the questions: how where when why and who are we?
A kaleidoscopic examination of post-pandemic America, The Ghost-Star King resurrects the tragic hero Oedipus, a figure from Greek antiquity, in a series of monologues that rage, plead, and pray for the empathy to confront power, alienation, and polarization in the digital age. Part poetry sequence, part stage drama, The Ghost-Star King rollicks through myth, politics, pop culture, neurodivergence, and the American Dream in its search for community and belonging.
Says Hadara Bar-Nadav: Adam Tavel's The Ghost-Star King is part apocalyptical landscape, part fantastical romp through classrooms and the ruined empires of capitalism. While each poem begins in mock-epic style announcing 'I, Oedipus, ' this book's Oedipus is plural, playful, and elliptical. Tavel's innovative collection is made of verse blocks arranged as a kind of play in three-parts: critique of America, the plague, and the aftermath. With sonic verve and swelling syntax, these poems invite us to frolic and rage alongside Oedipus, who palpably longs for Thebes, and states: 'I'd like to be that storm, that sand on sand, your little hand in mine, a partial rhyme.' This is a raucous and dazzling book.
Jaswinder Bolina elaborates: In The Ghost-Star King, Adam Tavel brings Oedipus into the modern American moment, replete with companions as likely and unlikely as Darth Vader, Kanye West, Glenn Beck, and Caspar David Friedrich. Tavel's monologues assemble into a jangly symphony connecting contemporary pandemics, climate catastrophes, and political strife with the myths of history. The result is a rich and soulful collection for an era that desperately needs it.
D, Nurske concludes: We all know we will understand contemporary America through tragedy, not through podcasts. Adam Tavel takes us on a Sophoclean vision quest into our frozen present. His book is wildly original, traumatized, and funky. It's an act of exorcism, necessary and unforgettable.
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