The Self-Styled No-Child - Softcover

Walker, Cody

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1904130704 ISBN 13: 9781904130703

Publisher: The Waywiser Press, 2016

Synopsis

This second book of poems by Cody Walker offers an unlikely array of characters: Edward Lear, Mitt Romney, Amy Clampitt, and Andy Kaufman share the stage. Walker himself is ever-present, with his shrugs, his heartbreak, his "way-out rhymes": "I'd like to write some lines about the snow, / but -- I dunno, / the snow seems so / fleeting: / a flock of gulls, late for a meeting." Full of comic interruptions and grave forecasts, these poems surprise, delight, and terrify.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Move over Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss, good old Anon, maybe even William Blake after how many pints of ale. Here's Cody Walker who declaims and bargains an 'icicle for a bicycle,' a 'vale of tears for ten good years.' Political, personal, this book is playful, pithy, outrageously out of style (omg-less rhyme galore!), this gathering a dark, endearing treasure made by accident and pure will. Beware: 'The LORD shall tickle thee with a feather duster, and boot thee with a tire iron, and goose thee with an actual goose.' Are these slippery inventions -- 'it all unravels' -- really poetry? They come out of its ancient middle distance between wake and sleep and what the hell: they mean." - Marianne Boruch   

"In Cody Walker's The Self-Styled No-Child, the poet-father sings to his new baby (read 'Cradle Song' or 'Small Suite' for perfect little servings of delight), but his childlike playfulness has an internal source, too. The light verses in Walker's new collection often have dark edges to them (see 'The Garden' or 'We Hated Our Lives'), and his social and political satires are unflinching. Still, this word-wizard with a genius for rhyme reminds us of how irrepressibly joy remains." - Mary Jo Salter

About the Author:

Cody Walker is the author of The Self-Styled No-Child (Waywiser, 2016) and Shuffle and Breakdown (Waywiser, 2008). His poems have appeared in The Yale Review, Parnassus, Slate, Poetry Northwest, and The Best American Poetry (2015 and 2007); his essays have appeared online in The New Yorker and The Kenyon Review. The co-editor of Alive at the Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwest (Ooligan Press, 2013), he lives with his family in Ann Arbor, where he teaches English at the University of Michigan.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Waywiser Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1904130704
• ISBN 13: 9781904130703
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80