Addled Smoke Material: Collaborative Poems 1972-2017

"Jack was always the mover behind these poems and a poetic mentor to me all my adult life." — Reed Bye A month before Jack Collom died in the summer of 2017, he and Reed Bye read through the poems they'd written together across more than forty years and made a selection they felt represented the best of their work together. "Addled Smoke Material" is an exquisite and rollicking inspiration, celebrating a long friendship and serving as a shining example of Collom's creative spirit of play and collaboration. The poems in this volume summon up qualities and inclinations unique to the present minds and moods of their producers, as well as to the "third mind" of the poem itself.

Reed Bye's most recent publications are "Fire for Thought" (BlazeVOX) and "What's This" (Lunamopolis), "Catching On" (Monkey Puzzle), and a cd of original songs, "Broke Even" (Fast Speaking Music). He recently retired after many years on the faculty of the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University, where he taught poetry writing workshops and courses in classic and contemporary literary studies. Jack Collom (1931-2017) published more than thirty volumes of his poetry, including "Arguing with Something Plato Said" (Rocky Ledge), "Red Car Goes By" (Tuumba Press), "Second Nature" (Instance Press), "Burst Fivey and the Eggdroppers" (Monkey Puzzle Press) and his final volume, "Partly" (Spuyten Duyvil). He pioneered college-level ecology literature classes, establishing "Eco-Lit" at Naropa University in 1985. Among his awards are two National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowships, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award and a 2013 Colorado Book Award for Poetry. His books from Teachers & Writers Collaborative are staples of the writings-by-children world.