Forge

The six poems in this collection fuse melancholy, absurdity, excess, and joy. One poem fuses word-processing documents mined from a computer lab. Another melts and reverses the voices of a syndicated television game show; while still another quarries prime time sound bites, casting them into girders of verse. The final sequence exhumes and polishes obituaries until they're as lustrous as iron pyrite. Whether tampering with pop culture science or tempering memory against alcohol, the words throughout Forge are counterfeit and precious, cynical and sanguine, real and realer.