The Hartford Book won The Believer Poetry Book Award!
Interviews:
Reviews of The Hartford Book:
Recent Poems:
Days of Future Dwell on Poets.org
Boston Review Forum:
THE NEXT BIG THING
Thanks to Ed Madden and Kara Candito for tagging me in this NEXT BIG THING.
What is the working title of your book?
TOURISM
What genre does it fall under?
Poetry, book.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
I got the idea for the title (i.e. I’m stealing the title) from that Danny Tenaglia album from the nineties. I like that idea–Tourism–as what an album/book can do. The sections of my Tourism are really distinct from each other formally and aesthetically, and so I’m mainly using the title that way. There are poems in received forms. Poems in syllabic patterns. There’s a sequence of poems that detail the construction and destruction of the original Penn Station. There’s a poem that’s kind of like a walking tour of Houston. It’s also my first book not tied to Hartford and Connecticut, and I’m–mostly for myself–using the title as a nod that way too.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Amadon catches up with himself.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Four years
Who or what inspired you to write it?
I have this notion that aesthetic conflict can be productive in terms of writing poems, if the poems are actually working through that conflict.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I’m sending it around.
What other works would you compare this book to within your genre?
Ronaldo Wilson’s Poems of the Black Object comes to mind as a book that you open up and find a lot of different kinds of poems at play.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Well, I’d like Moonlighting-era Bruce Willis to play me, which is basically every part. Though sometimes it’s me dressed up as a mid-century historical buildings preservationist.
What else about your manuscript might pique the reader’s interest?
It’s got “Black Helicopters” in it. Just like those ones quietly humming over your house.
My tagged writers for next Wednesday (March 6) are:
Eric Kocher
Patrick Whitfill
Michael Schiavo
All of whom are reading at our house in April. Come by.
THE HARTFORD BOOK — NOW AVAILABLE
“Mesmerizing as well as desperate, a wild-eyed tour of a lesser hell. Amadon claims these poems are almost entirely true–if so, God help him, the truth has been transformed into poetry. Sam Amadon–even his name (like Jack Kerouac) is a song. Sing it.”
–Nick Flynn
“These poems are street-smart, buoyantly lyrical, and they possess something beautiful and permanent at their core. Samuel Amadon does for Hartford what Koch, Schuyler, and O’Hara have done for New York City.”
–Tracy K. Smith
“Most poetry written in what might be called the vernacular is evidently a stunt, and we soon weary of such prowess. Sam Amadon has no such self-congratulatory purpose; his speech is helplessly frank in its high and low spirits:My parents thought they d keep me safe / by sticking me in a private school, / but Hartford works its way in no matter / what you learn & this winter / I ve come to know the worst people / the city has in it… The poet is one of them, and suffers as much as any chronicler since Clough for his own pathetic (even ghastly) powers of presence: this is not memoir, it is confession, the speaker is on the rack and only timidly aware of the torture he cannot help wreaking. Our poetry will never be the same now Amadon has spoken, our language can be entirely different. Happily for us.”
–Richard Howard
Available from – Small Press Distribution – Amazon – CSU –