Rain Check Poems

by Aaron Simon

Overview

Poetry. "Aaron Simon's lines feel like strokes of a pre-CBS Jazzmaster. Not plastic. More like rosewood with at least a Gibson tuneOmatic bridge. A brrruummm alliteration where each word-note contains the artful play of improv and composition colliding. Aaron Simon is a good band whose record is killing it on the deck these days."—Thurston Moore

"Aaron Simon's RAIN CHECK POEMS talk, sing and startle with deadpan elegance, practically reinventing the archetype of the dreamer as they unfold. Dreams beget dreams in other minds, light accumulates while passing through words, and a playfully alert visual sensibility syncs up with a subtle, frame-building prosody. I admire the offhand strangeness in these poems, the detours into beauty and assertion they propose, and the glimpses and passages of the world they amplify. It's a gorgeous read, especially aloud, to yourself, in a public place somewhere."—Anselm Berrigan

"RAIN CHECK POEMS keenly evokes the loss which our entry into the symbolic order thrusts us, that sense of yearning when the sensual and the relational slip into the lacunae of language. Throughout these subtle yet seductive poems, materiality—both grand and ordinary—opens a route of return, the oceanic fullness one feels while 'waiting for the kettle to whistle.' Aaron Simon's poetry whispers to me of what it means to be alive, really alive."—Dodie Bellamy

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609642167
Publisher:	BlazeVOX books
Publication date:	08/01/2015
Pages:	56
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Aaron Simon is the author of RAIN CHECK POEMS (BlazeVOX books, 2015), Carrier (Insurance Editions, 2006), Periodical Days (Green Zone Editions, 2007), and Senses Himself (Green Zone Editions, 2014). His poems have appeared in several publications, including Like Musical Instruments: 83 Contemporary American Poets (Broadstone Books, 2014), Shiny, Exquisite Corpse, Sal Mimeo, Across the Margin, Nowhere, and Harriet the Blog. He studied poetry and philosophy at The New School in NYC, and has lived between San Francisco and Brooklyn since 1999.

Editorial Reviews

03/07/2016
Simon (Senses Himself) tackles ideas of leaving, longing, and missed opportunity as he creates a sense of urgent questioning in his fourth collection. Owing much to the New York School and displaying hints of Romanticism, Simon's poems are replete with moments of wild juxtaposition that let him reinterpret personal scenes with depth and humor. For example, he combines enjambment and anachronism in the title poem: "O Fates! O Body!/ Rude sirens cause a scene." Simon's formal technique is highly conversational and associative, and the poems are notable for their sparse use of punctuation. Through this mechanism, many lines do double duty as they interact with preceding and succeeding lines. This lends itself to a sense of confusion and a feeling of messy in-between-ness; readers are lost in the fog of existence and the poet's reveling in both how simultaneously maddening and liberating it can be. In "Mendocino," the feeling of love amid ancient redwoods and "cloud banks out of Blake" leads to a sensation of being "an ellipsis/ in a long line of ellipses." Despite the seeming insignificance of the self, what is being experienced still feels vital and important. It's a theme that recurs throughout the collection's mostly brief, occasional poems. Simon manages to be earnest and dreamy while still feeling grounded in the immediate material of life. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly