Summoning iconic outlaws and rebels such as Johnny Appleseed, Casanova, and Bonnie and Clyde, the poems in this collection seek to alter and turn back the mass mediated tendency to find "the great awakening in a/car; nirvana in a hamburger,/a genie in a tube/of toothpaste." The poems direct this discontent with the real world, not into another call for action or mere complaint, but into a performance that enacts the very change it seeks. This is the point where poems become rituals of countercultural resistance played out in prayers and offerings to mother ocean and the White Goddess, or as magic spells to actualize the Ancient Egyptian's "coming day": a new dawn that awaits the weary traveler through the long night of the dead. The long poem that leads the volume, “Thus Glad for Nightmares,” uses a scatalogical fantasy to playfully criticize the manufacturing of the American dystopia. The generous selection of shorter works that follow continues the silly-serious satire in conceits that involve Geronimo as a drag king taking over television to replay Custer’s Last Stand; Blackbeard emparting hobo wisdom over a campfire tea break; crowds of rioting hobos, the rise of the primordial Babylonian goddess Tiamat, and a giant beaver raging like King Lear. Funny, angry, ridiculous, mocking and outrageous by turns, these “spells” satirize the conventions of sexuality, business, television, family, property, violence, materialism, and rebellion in ways that are sure to delight even those who claim they don’t like poetry.
