Timestamp: The Daily Practice of Poetry

Breskin’s jaunty, wry—and always spot on—observations of our increasingly outrageous world pull us more deeply into that world, igniting our sense of responsibility, inciting us to act. It’s political poetry in the most enabling sense—it reminds us that the political is rooted in the polis—of the citizens; it reminds us that we belong—and that belonging brings not only obligations, but also kinship deep enough to resist what we must. And—hooray hooray!—his clear map of our plummet to imminent disaster also manages to be screamingly funny. --Cole Swensen

Out of the smashup of our vernacular—its mangled memes and wonked-out argot—David Breskin’s Timestamp reveals the invaluable quality that Thelonious Monk once called “Ugly Beauty.” Even as Breskin takes a good look at the worst, his sentences, lines and phrases stand as triumphs of the imagination. Horrific, vivid, hilarious, and strangely glorious, these are the poems the age deserves. --Peter Campion

Born in Chicago, David Breskin first made his name as a freelance journalist, writing for national magazines such as Rolling Stone, GQ, and LIFE. He has published six books of poetry, including RICHTER 858, a multimedia inquiry into the abstract paintings of Gerhard Richter, with music by Bill Frisell and contributions by thirteen American poets; Supermodel, a one-sentence-long epic poem, or novel-in-verse; and DIRTY BABY, which marries sixty-six ghazals to an equal number of pictures by Ed Ruscha and music by Nels Cline. He has also published a behind-the-scenes account of the recording of "We Are the World"; a novel, The Real Life Diary of a Boomtown Girl; and a compendium of interviews with film directors, Inner Views: Filmmakers in Conversation. Breskin has worked as a record producer since the early '80s. In addition to Frisell and Cline, he's collaborated with leading-edge musicians such as Mary Halvorson, Kris Davis, Craig Taborn, Ingrid Laubrock, Ches Smith and Patricia Brennan. David Breskin lives in San Francisco.