In From Forever | David Perkins | ISBN 9781948509503 | 116 pages | Paper | $19.99 | Available Now
“We have been met with a rare gift … this is brave stuff.”
“Perkins invites us to embrace all that the tradition has given us — its forms and devices … to make strong poetry with scintillating verve that freely draws on all that came before in spry and novel ways. — Marc Zegans, GLASS; A Journal of Poetry
What Zegans uncovered in Perkins’ previous collection, Post-Modern Blues, has taken wing in the poems found In From Forever. This third book by Perkins from Ice Cube Press travels through many of the familiar landscapes as in his first, I May or May Not Love You, as well as in Post-Modern Blues: love and loss, the vicissitudes of living in a 21st century fraught with peril and nonsense, and music and art and poetry, and family and friends and lovers, and the tribulations and paradoxes of Time as we move through it.
What is new in this volume is an investigation into the forms and structure of poetry, attempting to craft with rigor an orderly enquiry into the chaos of the days we travel through (with, sometimes, a sense of wry humor and sometimes a bewildered wonder) appropriate to the wreckage of an age that seems to have a tinge of madness in it. Some images will strike and stay with you. The dialog between author and reader, the goal of these poems, is familiar, friendly, without unnecessary obscurities—and inviting. You are likely to find a comrade here entangled in words and lines you will understand are indeed your own.
David M. Perkins made books his life, owning two bookstores before moving into publishing with the University of Illinois Press, Georgetown University Press and Oxford University Press among them. An amateur Tchaikovsky scholar, his poems, articles, and book reviews have appeared in numerous venues for over 40 years.
Jay Miller is a prolific, multi-media artist, painter, and illustrator currently living, creating, and exhibiting his works in South Florida. His illustrations and cover art were a part of I May or May Not Love You as well as in Post-Modern Blues.