Chief Jay Strongbow is Real

Timothy Gager's latest book, Chief Strongbow is Real, is evidence of a new stage for the veteran poet and novelist. Before this book, Gager safely relied on his poetic insight into the struggle we all face, and his powerful phraseology; in this one, he stretches out into the worlds of politics and personality. His eye for the telling detail remains, but his work has become more expansive, more timely, and less hard-bitten. This is a mature poet showing us exactly what he's got: and it's good. -Rusty BarnesAuthor of On Broad Soundand I Am Not Ariel. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The poems in Chief Jay Strongbow Is Real exist in liminal spaces. Timothy Gager realizes that like the actor who portrayed Strongbow, we are all “fake…actor[s] within/the theater of our absurdity.” These poems aren’t afraid to rail against the world we find ourselves in, where if “the cash is too good/right in our backyard, [we] sign the contracts/then set the tap water on fire.” These are poems that fight for truth and justice and love – whether we’re ready for them yet, or not. –Shaindel Beers, author of A Brief History of Time and The Children’s War and Other Poems --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy's work is the cool that doesn't know it's fire. And his poetry, dry ice, cold to a flame. And all that cool, fire, ice, vocabulary and metaphor make volcanoes out of sandboxes of life and experience. -Harlym 1TWO5, poetic force to be reckoned with --------------------------------------------------------------------------- These Timothy Gager’s poems are diurnal animals prowling the midnight streets of his heart, searching for suburban morality, conscience, beauty, rawness, hope, and simplicity of time and being. When you read his work, you will be fetching him a bowl of milk made of love and fatigue and sobriety. The poems in this collection will drill quotidian sadness and nostalgia and hope into your left torso and make you dream of fabric softener and leggings and fertilizer. –Vi Khi Nao author of Fish in Exile and The Old Philosopher

Timothy Gager is the author of thirteen books of short fiction and poetry, including two novels. He has had over 400 works of fiction and poetry published, eleven of which have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work has been read on National Public Radio, and he has hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts since 2001.