THE BOOK: You Are Still Alive
PUBLISHED IN: 2019.
THE AUTHOR: William Stobb
THE EDITOR: David Dodd Lee
THE PUBLISHER: 42 Miles Press
SUMMARY: “Each poem in You Are Still Alive introduces itself with wistful, comic nihilism, but grows into a compassionate, fearless friend. It’s as though the reader had been dropped into the mind of a loving, funny, humble, infinitely generous, nimble-minded Buddhist monk brought up on classic science fiction. The monk’s musings honor the marvelous strangeness of each passing moment, never losing sight of the yawning maw of the dubious future. His contemplations are both heartening and sobering. The poems’ animated cosmic hospitality bring our greatest and smallest concerns into perfectly calibrated relation as they ponder consciousness, technology, freedom, the future, the worldly, how to lead a virtuous life without being an annoying prig, how flawed and destructive humans are, how to be inventively fair-minded in at least five dimensions, and what life forms might come after us, stumbling on the ruins of our so-called civilization.” — Amy Gerstler, author of Ghost Girl, Bitter Angel, and Scattered at Sea.
THE BACK STORY: No special back story. I write poems all the time, and this is a collection of the poems I wrote between the publication of my 2012 collection, Absentia, and about 2018 or so. The original poems were published in American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Kenyon Review, and many other good journals and zines.
WHY THIS TITLE?: The title comes from an artwork by Landon Sheely (see landonsheely.com). I contacted him about using the language from his piece as my book title, and he very graciously said “sure.” His work is great.
WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? The poems are funny, diverse, energized, weird, deep, bizarre. It’ll stretch your head out.
REVIEW COMMENTS:
“This book is a rare and beautiful accomplishment,” Bob Hicok.
“Infused with elegiac hope, the poems hover on the cusp of an enlightened release of all worldly things—and a deep reluctance to give them up. Stobb proves that the profound exists in surprising places and that we may access thoughtfulness even when taking part in thoughtless tasks.”–Emily Wolahan for Colorado Review.
AUTHOR PROFILE: William Stobb is the author of five previous poetry collections, including the National Poetry Series selection, Nervous Systems, and Absentia, both from Penguin Books. He works on the editorial staff of the ground-breaking ‘zine Conduit, and its book-publishing arm, Conduit Books & Ephemera, and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
AUTHOR COMMENTS: Check it out. If you don’t like it, send me a nasty email.
SAMPLE
https://poets.org/poems/william-stobb
WHERE TO BUY IT: Amazon, Barnes & noble, etc.
PRICE: $16.00
CONTACT THE AUTHOR: william.stobb@gmail.com
Snowflakes in a Blizzard 