The Book Catapult welcomes local poets Manuel Paul Lopez and Adam Deutsch, discussing and signing their new collections Nerve Curriculum (Lopez) and Every Transmission (Deutsch) on Friday, May 26 at 7pm.
Nerve Curriculum:
"In this remarkable book, lyric fabulist Manuel Paul López embeds parallel worlds that unite dreamtime and memory's ‘syllabus of smoke.’ Episodes relate the perils of youth and the absurdity of a ‘state-sanctioned self’ amid the social fevers here and now, along with the exquisitely berserk stagecraft needed to mount a present-day rebellion of the senses...NERVE CURRICULUM is the thrilling confirmation of a unique élan that can fuel the Latinx imagination. López accommodates us with ample poetic vitality and a surrealist regard for releasing personhood from having to ‘live perpetually on the verge of living.’” —Roberto Tejada
Manuel Paul López's books include NERVE CURRICULUM (Futurepoem), THESE DAYS OF CANDY (Noemi Press, Akrilica Series), The Yearning Feed (University of Notre Dame Press), winner of the Earnest Sandeen Poetry Prize, and Death of a Mexican and Other Poems (Bear Star Press). He also co-edited three anthologies, Reclaiming Our Stories: In the Time of Covid and Uprising (City Works Press), Reclaiming Our Stories 2 (City Works Press), and Reclaiming Our Stories (City Works Press), all three generated from a community-based writers' workshop of the same name that he's co-facilitated since 2016 in Southeast San Diego. He lives in San Diego and teaches at San Diego City College.
Every Transmission:
"I trust Adam Deutsch’s humane music – the rhapsody in poems such as “The Percolator Ode,” the subtle lyricism of pieces such as “Plash” and “Yes.” In this book full of images and insights into one human’s day, full of fog and hummers and ducks, municipal waste, five-day-old goats, public radio, spiders and copper sun – which is to say, full of the day’s wonder and trouble, and realization that “all its fire is now a part of my face.” Yes, I trust this voice, trust this daily heartbreak and strangeness of “deleting dead people from my address book,” trust the beauty that lives in these pages, real and shy – like the beauty one trusts often is – like that “bug that walks the wall of bent nails.” There is lyricism here, and grace." —Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa
Adam Deutsch is the author of a full-length collection, Every Transmission, from Fernwood Press. He has work recently in Poetry International, Thrush, Juked, AMP Magazine, Ping Pong, Alchemy, and Typo, and has a chapbook called Carry On (Elegies). He teaches in the English Department at Grossmont College and is the publisher of Cooper Dillon Books. He lives with his spouse and child in San Diego.
Admission/Cost: FREE
Location:
The Book Catapult
3010-B Juniper St.
San Diego, CA 92104
Friday, May 26 - 7:00 PM
