Patter

by Douglas Kearney

Overview

For a couple struggling with infertility, conception is a war against their bodies. Blood and death attend. But when the war is won, and life stares, hungry, in the parents’ faces, where does that violence, anxiety, and shame go? The poems in Patter re-imagine miscarriages as minstrel shows, magic tricks, and comic strips; set Darth Vader against Oedipus’s dad in competition for “Father of the Year;” and interrogate the poet’s family’s stint on reality TV. In this, his third collection, award-winning poet Douglas Kearney doggedly worries the line between love and hate, showing how it bleeds itself into “fatherhood.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597095808
Publisher:	Red Hen Press
Publication date:	03/01/2014
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Poet/performer/librettist Douglas Kearney’s first full-length collection of poems, Fear, Some, was published in 2006 by Red Hen Press. His second, The Black Automaton (Fence Books, 2009), was Catherine Wagner’s selection for the National Poetry Series. It was also a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award in 2010. His third collection is Patter (Red Hen Press, 2014). He has received a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Coat Hanger award, and fellowships at Idyllwild and Cave Canem. Raised in Altadena, CA, he lives with his family in California’s Santa Clarita Valley. He teaches at CalArts.

Poet/performer/librettist Douglas Kearney’s first full-length collection of poems, Fear, Some, was published in 2006 by Red Hen Press. His second, The Black Automaton (Fence Books, 2009), was Catherine Wagner’s selection for the National Poetry Series. It was also a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award in 2010. His third collection is Patter (Red Hen Press, 2014). He has received a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Coat Hanger award, and fellowships at Idyllwild and Cave Canem. Raised in Altadena, CA, he lives with his family in California’s Santa Clarita Valley. He teaches at CalArts.

Read an Excerpt

TUESDAY MORNING AT WORK
 
calls her back an ache. and knowing blood means no
baby no cellphone’s a wound of words baby no.
only language. so sorry. I lo—
but it’s off. the cut shut
in her purse. my tinny words. she goes
to bleed on the toilet.
this ain’t shit. this ain’t. shut
the stall’s a broken room.
 
know there’s nothing to lose. in her purse: my gonna
be ok baby oh. call me… vibrates. nothing to lose
except her body’s oldest argument.
accept a stop sign in the cotton. unmentionable.
blood means no blood. that’s what.
quits the stall the restroom—and says nothing. this is work
I don’t know. soon we’ll roll that stone again maybe.
for now no baby oh in her purse
I’m so sorry for now
stop.

Editorial Reviews

• Interviewed on Commonplace Podcast

Wielding an undeniable command of the poetic line, Kearney's poems mix humor, irreverence, adventure, and the deeply personal...His meticulous execution manifests both on the page and the stage. Kearney is one of the most progressive poets writing in this age.
—Mike Sonksen, KCET

This is a book worth reading in a single sitting, letting it take you under from the get-go. I have trouble quoting from it. It fights being excerpted. But this book is rich – it is a text that you can read many times over for its music, material, bravery, pointed playfulness, its social consciousness, its deep intelligence.
—Diana Arterian, Cold Front Mag

Cultural Weekly Douglas Keraney Patter Poetry Video

CalArts Interview with Doug Kearney

Kearney continues to innovate, to invent poetry, to renovate the mind—its logical and emotional rigor—to jolt his readers from a routine poetry.
—Wesley Rothman, American Micro Reviews

The most striking aspect of Kearney’s style is his use of font and typefaces—often with text blurring into itself. Much of Kearney’s uses of these texts rubbing against each other serve as stage directions, rapid changes in tone and speakers’ voices, or as a call-and-response mode of blues form. Kearney is a dynamic performer, and his poems give a quick sense of what those performances entail. Kearney’s word play and facility with language is, in fact, stunning. There are few books of poems that wrangle with personal tragedy in as visceral and muscled a way as Patter does.
—Sean Singer, The Rumpus

Douglas Kearney's new book of poetry isn't necessarily something you might pick up casually. It demands a lot from readers, but the payoff is worth it. The collection is called "Patter." And in it, Kearney takes his readers into a most private struggle, shared with his wife, to conceive a child. Infertility, miscarriage and, finally, fatherhood.
—Rachel Martin, NPR Weekend Edition (Interview, Transcript)

See Douglas Kearney’s “Every Hard Rapper’s Father Ever: Father of the Year,” and notice how hard it is, at first, to do anything but see it. The poem plays with sound and sense, but it also plays with space…
—Editors of Poetry Foundation

The Georgia Review

From the Publisher