“MTSU’s Gaylord Brewer may be America’s least cynical nihilistic poet. A good chunk of his work features a keen awareness of what’s coming–it’s not good–while reveling in the knowledge that what’s coming isn’t yet here. In The Martini Diet, his latest collection, Brewer writes, “But they’ve not arrived yet, / the monsters of our reckoning, / and my boys and I still live the brilliant / moments we were born to.” Vandy’s Kate Daniels, who knew (correctly) from the moment she turned five that she was born to write, shares a similar sentiment in her poem “Crowns,” which she dedicated to the almost-nihilist Philip Levine: “[A]nd your mind opening up like the pine forest swishing fragrantly overhead / way up in the dark that is coming, but remains, for the moment, blissfully at bay.”
Wed., Oct. 22, 4 p.m., 2008 @ Austin Peay State University [more here]
Tags: APSU, Gaylord Brewer, Kate Daniels, Nashville, Poetry, Poetry News, poets, zone 3