Plum Smash and Other Flashbulbs : Letters, Sketches, and Poems, 2000-2001

Poetry. Written over 2000 and 2001, many of these poems take the form of sketches and personal letters to friends. Mixing the mundane with the unexpected, Gallagher's collection is playful, surreal and irreverent. In "Cedar," he writes, "Pistachio is better than pastiche/ but not as good as Petruchio in the Taming/ of the Shrew? What depends on shadow?/ A twitch of Eros. It can be catchy Snap/ snap snap poets are really funny/ like mousetraps on fingers." In "Val," he writes, "I wrote you a postcard/ but it was too sloppy and I was/ feeling down not because of Lightnin'/ Hopkins but because I broke down/ and took too many barbiturates." As Bernadette Mayer puts it, "i feel like i am writing a poem by ryan, as you can see i have no periods or exclamation points, it makes my role as a weaver difficult, all i can say is equal stuff but i can still use the semi-colon; what do you think of that?" This collection is from Bootstrap Press's "Positively Past Post-Modern Poet Series."