BAND NAMES & OTHER POEMS by Peter Davis

BAND NAMES & OTHER POEMS

Peter Davis

6 x 9 inches

236 pages

ISBN: 978-0-9965868-70
$16

Publication date: April 2018

NOW AVAILABLE
The fourth book of poems by Peter Davis, Band Names & Other Poems. 
Preorders ship in February, exclusively from Bloof Books. Retailers will begin stocking the book in mid-March.

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*NOTE: The domestic shipping charge automatically added by PayPal is for US addresses only. Square will only accept US addresses. For international shipping including Canada, contact us at sales at bloof books dot com. Postal rules have recently changed and we are unable to use First Class Mail to Canada for this item. (Check your favorite online booksellers in your home country—they can probably save you on shipping. Our books do have global distribution.)

In Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!, Peter Davis asked himself, "What would happen if poets told the whole truth about themselves and their artistic ambitions? What if every poem were stripped down to radical honesty?” In TINA he asked, "What would happen if every poem were addressed to the same person, someone not exactly a beloved?" 

This time around, Davis started not with a question but a dare as his constraint: create an endless list of band names, each plausible, spanning a variety of musical styles and eras, without exhausting the concept.

BAND NAMES & OTHER POEMS is the result of that experiment, the Oulipo-inflected descendent of Raymond Queneau’s 100,000,000,000,000 Poems, sort of, but funnier and about bands. Turns out, naming bands is a peculiar linguistic activity—they’ve got their own grammar, and a flexible form that’s as ready to satirize current events as to indulge in a really bad pun. Readers will soon find themselves visualizing and even hearing the bands: understanding how Shock Fawn differs from The Stitch Release, why Stations of the Crossbow could never share a bill with Trauma Rasta or Gretchen Retch, while Midnight in Fairy Tales opening for Paper Kate makes total sense. When Trump Wall and the Mexico Pays does a contemporary-country cover of “Foreign Scandal” by 80s punk legends Reagan’s Assassination the crowd goes unwittingly wild.

Two books in one! OTHER POEMS consists of 40 standalone pieces like “Ocean Radiator,” “The Use of Youth,” “The Future as We Planned It,” and “Succeeding in America.”  

PETER DAVIS's previous books of poetry are Hitler’s Mustache, Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!, and TINA. He writes, draws, and makes music in Muncie, Indiana, where he lives with his wife and kids and teaches at Ball State University. For more information visit artisnecessary.com.

Poems from this new book have appeared in Ampersand; the Awl; the Believer; Big Bell; Columbia Poetry Review; Forklift, Ohio; Masque and Spectacle; interrupture; Juked; Omniverse; Open Letters Monthly; Poet Lore; Powder Keg; Rhino; and Sixth Finch.

Cover design for BAND NAMES & OTHER POEMS

EXCERPT (originally published in Omniverse):

Succeeding in America

It is not as if I can capture the high road simply
by mowing everyone down at the ankles. In fact,
as I try to navigate the crust, I find my desire
to spring forward is held in check my desire
to fall back. It’s like, for each and every Newton
there is an opposite Newton, say, a fig, a Wayne
who is chubby as a tween but a real fucker
on the banjo. Also, as far as showmanship goes,
it’s hard to beat a drum harder than all the
daydreaming eyes at the soda fountain or all
the twinkling cheeks at the record store. For
every black button on a lapel, there is a tiny wish
in my heart. At every hopeful talent show
the number of dance steps is the same number
of steps to my bed. In my bed, where my dreams
are cartoon surfers, I can feel the musing of
the future. I feel the skin that isn’t yours spread
across an ocean that isn’t ours. It’s like the foam
in my throat is a bubbled snake, like the vest
in my chest is a fur grenade.

Note on shipping to Canada

We are unpleasantly surprised to find it is no longer practical for us to ship our books to readers and reviewers in Canada, at least not directly from our HQ in New Jersey.

Here are the new USPS rules: http://blog.stamps.com/2017/12/26/important-usps-making-changes-first-class-mail-international-flats/

We have processed all outstanding orders, but as of today we will be refusing/refunding orders and review copies that call for shipping into Canada. We're researching some workarounds, but here's the gist:

For a typical 6-oz. poetry paperback, the shipping to Canada via First Class International Package Rate would be $9.50 US, above and beyond the $15 or $16 cover price.

Some of our books are a good deal heavier than that. Recently it cost us $16 in postage to mail a single copy of our largest book to a reviewer in Canada. To ship that book to a reader, we'd have to charge $32, double the cover price.

We can reroute review copy requests via our international printer network, but that also costs us $10 a pop. So we can't do that, like, a lot.

We are internationally distributed though, via Ingram/Lightning Source and various wholesalers. So your favorite local booksellers and online bookstores up there should be able to get the books to you that way, with much lower shipping fees.

Exception: We think the chapbooks can still squeak by as First Class International Letter Rate, unless they are over 3.5 oz. The only way to get our handmades is to order them directly. We're upset that this means some chapbooks may not be available to our readers outside the US.

But we'll keep looking into this.

In the meantime, please note that the PayPal buttons on this site do not accurately reflect this new rule, and orders placed to Canadian addresses will be refunded/rerouted as necessary. (We're about to rebuild the site and store and will address that then. Our Square store only accepts US orders anyway, per their own policy.)