The Good Things About America [Paperback]

Derrick Brown (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2009

"We are not who we were...” The Good Things About America is a book that, above all else, celebrates the enduring awesomeness of the United States of America. This is not meant to sound glib, ironic, or superior. Rather, what we imply is that despite every blind, deaf , and dumb thing America has done in its long and strange history- every misstep, unpunished crime, and lingering bias- there is still something honest, beautiful and hopeful about who we are as a country and as a people. This book serves as a historical document that uses poetry and prose to explore some of the visions for change, the modern glory, albeit broken or majestic, of this unbeatable rising landscape.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Derrick Brown - former paratrooper for the 82nd Airborne, gondolier, magician, and fired weatherman (Flagstaff, AZ) - has performed at over 1500 venues and universities internationally, including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, La Sorbonne in Paris and CBGB's in NYC. As president/captain of Write Bloody Publishing, he is dedicated to bringing American poetry into rock and roll status. He has performed with The Cold War Kids, The Flaming Lips and comedian David Cross. His work has been featured in books with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, and Billy Collins. He lives on a boat called The Sea Section.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Crab Apple Pirates by Andrea Gibson We were chubby-faced school kids, Snickers bar windpiped, crab apple pirates, backward-baseball-capped, knee-scraped snow angels, Dukes-of-Hazard dreamers, bumper-car-bodied salamander catchers, Michael Jordan believers. I couldn't fly, but my hang time was three minutes and ten seconds. Smart kids were stupid. Books were trees cut down... I thought history was over. I cried during the national anthem. Once I found a butterfly's wing on the sidewalk. I wanted to keep it but I didn't. I knew there were things I should never find beautiful. Like death. And girls... I started writing songs, recorded them on my ghetto blaster and mailed the tapes to the local radio station. They never played them because they never had good taste. My mother did. She was a secretary. Her fingernails were red and she loved my father, who after the war became a mailman so when I was a baby she would carry me to the post office and weigh me on the postal scales. Once, years later, I got lost in the mail. The next day I came home from college and corrected my father's grammar. When I was ten my mother had another daughter. I heard babies sometimes die in their sleep so at night when my parents went to bed I'd put on my Karate Kid kimono and I'd sneak into her room to guard her heartbeat. The heartbeat thieves didn't find her for fifteen years. At eleven I discovered beer. At thirteen, shame. At fourteen I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal lord and savior. At nineteen I nailed my palm to Amanda Bucker's vagina, actually drooler on her breasts, and said yes so loud God couldn't disagree. But my family did. So I lost them for a while, and in that while my uncle Barry lost his fingers to the paper mill. My uncle Peter lost his liver to Vietnam. My mother lost her legs to God's will. In her will I inherit everything: the seventeen photographs we didn't lose in the fire. All of them with charcoaled edges. My mother holds them to her chest and tells me she can still smell the smoke. I tell her I will guard them well. My father's freckled shoulders. My sister's brown, brown eyes. My mother's patient hands buckling my tiny blue suspenders. That one December when we built a bonfire in the middle of the frozen lake and I skated around the flames with my snowsuit's frozen zipper sticking to my tongue. My mother called me name. Told me to smile for the camera. I still remember the flash. And that enormous fire. With the ice beneath it. That didn'

Product Details

• Paperback: 245 pages
• Publisher: Write Bloody Publishing (April 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 098214881X
• ISBN-13: 978-0982148815
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #223,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars I think of this book every time I drive through Worcester, May 25, 2011

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Megan Thoma "coffeehousemt" (Providence, RI United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Good Things About America (Paperback)

The beautiful thing about this book is that it is rooted in place. You will probably automatically go to the poems of places you've lived or visited or once loved a boy who was from there. Which is normal and good and what we do. Eventually you will wind through the book and read all the poems, and in the same way that you took your experience from those places into the poems, you will then take the poems with you when you visit those places. I think of Lea Deschenes poem about the streets of Worcester every single time I drive through the cruddy, pot-holed streets or Worcester. It endears me to them in a way that streets in other cities can only hope for.