“Ah, writ happens.” Like the con men who rely on thieves' Latin to ply their trade, the poems in Peter Jay Shippy's award-winning collection don't play well with other poems. They are difficult. They rave. They are unsettling and blunt. They crash cars and ride tsunamis and hitch rides on tugs. They also provide a contemporary, ironic, and tender view of America, all the while layering wordplay, cleverness, and sentiment.
Shippy's narrators “dance like night writing”; they “witness the reverse / side of actions” and “take a walk on the wing”; they feel “nothing but articulation” and attach “our planet to the highest branch"” they “have a good feeling about most birds, and trust / that they are a friend to man.” In other words, their condition is Beckettian, but they speak like one of Sam Shepherd's dusty road angels.
