The fumes of crowded Greyhound buses, a Floridian coast visited by Father Time, a woman with a penchant for birds and elevators—what is the substance of humility?
Written in three sections, Starving Romantic explores themes of loss, family, home, and love through a hyperreal lyricism. The backdrops are often the forgotten Midwest, the sprawling landscapes of Detroit, and the anonymous house, complete with porch and backyard.
Starving Romantic lives in chaos, between its own conflicted nature. A celebration of turbulence, romance, and youth and the lingering pain that it brings with it.
“Starving Romantic is a major poetry debut from this young Detroit poet. With the earthy heart of Philip Levine and the inventiveness in language and form of e e cummings, this book is a treasure to behold.”
– M.L. LIEBLER, AUTHOR OF I WANT TO BE ONCE
“Perrone’s poems brilliantly crack open the wheezy engine that drives so many of our desires to journey toward homes both real and implied, metaphorical and visceral, dreamed and invoked.”
– MATTHEW GAVIN FRANK, AUTHOR OF THE MAD FEAST AND PREPARING THE GHOST
“A meditation on finitude, contingency, and desire, the personae are caught between greyhound bus stops in a landscape of doubt. Restless, unattached, yet self-possessed and wise, the voices that emerge in the poems are resolute.”
– CAROLINE MAUN, AUTHOR OF THE SLEEPING AND WHAT REMAINS
“These are beautiful, real-life poems in language that’s just the right amount of music and horror, a set of dream poems and surreal memories and desires from the raw, present moment.”
– DOUGLAS COLE, AUTHOR OF BALI POEMS AND WESTERN DREAM
“This collection did much more than make the romantic in me starve—it fed my sense of exploration.”
– GARRETT DENNERT, AUTHOR OF WOUNDED TONGUE
A micro-chap in the form of a single extended poem tracing a spiraling journey across the southwest. Geography becomes history becomes hypnogogic grief. How might we allocate forgiveness in a desert of blame?
Lush. Lonely. Lovely. “Travelogue for the Dispossessed” is supersaturated in atmosphere, in the crackle and slip of a broadcast caught from a station two towns over and at least one life away. Vincent James Perrone deftly orchestrates this contagion of noise, this bundle of notes, into the ear-burnt spill of sound that keeps coming long after you’ve turned out and turned the dial all the way off. Sheet music for the void; this poem reminds me that the sounds we once heard have heard us in return.
– CANDICE WUEHLE, AUTHOR OF DEATH INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX & FIDELITORIA: FIXED OR FLUXED
Perrone is a master of evocation. His gorgeous imagery and visceral lyricism transform the seemingly mundane into the extraordinary. “Travelogue for the Dispossessed” charts our collective grief, disassociation, and desire for transcendence in these fluctuating economic and ecological times.
– JOSEPH HARRIS, AUTHOR OF YOU’RE IN THE WRONG PLACE
Equal parts desolation and desperation, “Travelogue for the Dispossessed” is a fevered dreamwalk through the desert. Landscape and emotion are carried in the Southwest’s eroding wind like a familiar song in an unfamiliar key. Formerly working things crumble under balding tires and sun-baked asphalt. The mathematics of failing relationships meld with a subtle musicality for a road-worn mixtape of grief and loneliness that hits close & hard. The negative space bleeds radio static as Vincent James Perrone scans the stations for something familiar in an alien expanse. We’re left with what he’s found & what he’s found to be missing.
– A.S. COOMER, AUTHOR OF MISDEEDS & FLIRTING WITH DISASTER AND OTHER POEMS
Each contributor begins with the same eleven words: You see a watering hole. Reprieve from the old dusty path. — and, branching outwards, works in unison with the chapters around them to generate something wholly unique.
Before bands could upload their songs to Myspace, the cheapest way for fans to hear new music that wasn’t allowed radio airtime was to purchase compilation albums put out by smaller record labels. These cost a few dollars at most, just enough to cover production costs, because it was also the cheapest way for independent labels to find new fans. Fast-forward to 2020, and Myspace has been replaced by countless free web-based platforms for writers/musicians/artists to host their work. There is so much new media, it’s hard to discover new art from all the noise that is uploaded and shared across a growing number of media platforms. We hope this novel breaks through the noise and highlights the incredible work being made in our unique artistic space.