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    Everybody's Vaguely Familiar
    Everybody's Vaguely Familiar
    Everybody's Vaguely Familiar
    Ebook105 pages59 minutes

    Everybody's Vaguely Familiar

    By Jack Powers

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    About this ebook

    Jack Powers is attuned to twists of life and language—insults refitted as endearments, families defined by their troubles, great care taken with modes of recklessness . . . . Near the start of his debut collection, he’s praising the massive coronary, favoring it over the dwindling disease and dementia that took his elders. But as mor

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGolden Antelope Press
    Release dateJan 31, 2019
    ISBN9781936135677
    Everybody's Vaguely Familiar
    Author

    Jack Powers

    Jack Powers is the author of EVERYBODY'S VAGUELY FAMILIAR. His poems and essays have appeared in THE SOUTHERN REVIEW,THE CORTLAND REVIEW, THE NEW YORK TIMES and elsewhere. He won the 2015 and 2012 CONNECTICUT RIVER REVIEW PoetryContests and was a finalist for the 2013 and 2014 RATTLE Poetry Prizes. He and his wife, Anne, live in Fairfield CT and havethree children scattered across the country. He recently retired from Joel Barlow High School after 38 years of teaching specialeducation, English and math. His website is http://jackpowers13.com/poetry/.

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      Book preview

      Everybody's Vaguely Familiar - Jack Powers

      Everybody_Cover_550

      Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar

      Praise for Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar:

      I love Jack Powers’ light touch and deep vision. Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar is brilliant, humanistic, quick-witted and fast-paced — but the cameos of family, high school, pop icons and suburbia open seamlessly onto the sacred ground of tragedy: mortality, suffering, how we create ourselves out of nothing and are undone. In Smokin’ a Real Cool Brand, Powers’ zinging lines arrive at an epiphany — an acute awareness of my good fortune — but that’s not where the poem ends: it ends in the human predicament: illusion, desire, cussedness, our need to flirt with disaster. Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar is a book that will last.

      — D. Nurkse

      The poems in Jack Powers’ debut collection, Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar are as human as it gets, maneuvering through the emotional landscape of life with wit, a no-nonsense clarity and a touch of sarcasm. These poems are immediate, as if each one is talking specifically to you, the reader, creating a bridge of instant friendship. So when Powers explores fatherhood, the death of a parent, or how we can get the most out of the time we do have, his poems offer a past, present and most importantly a future. Read this collection and celebrate what it means to be alive.

      — Kevin Pilkington

      Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar is a funny and poignant ride through the vivid details of our everyday lives. From adolescent smoking to philtrum guards to a miscarriage, Powers captures a male voice in search of what it all adds up to — if anything. In this carefully observant collection, he appears to suggest that even though we fail the ones we love and death claims us all, the struggle is worth it, especially when family shares it with us: I will ... /remember a beach in Rhodes// where stars littered the sky/ like luminescent river stones/ so close// we could pluck them/ from the heavens,/ offer them to each other…. Powers’ book shows us how to wish for more.

      — Laurel Peterson

      Jack Powers is attuned to twists of life and language — insults refitted as endearments, families defined by their troubles, great care taken with modes of recklessness, and in his deftly funny title poem, Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar, remembering people while forgetting faces. At the start of his debut collection, he’s praising the massive coronary, favoring it over the dwindling disease and dementia that took his elders. But as mortality hovers, he teases, testing wits and pulling out the good stories of lucky close calls, game grandmothers, swearing babies, and a wry mother’s sartorial ghosting of her son. Pretty soon, he’s against the quick demise — and the sky seemed full/ of answers, some hurtling/like arrows into the future.

      — Amy Holman

      Jack Powers’ powerful debut collection grapples with existential questions of death, illness, and love. Yet it is one of the most life-affirming collections I have read. Powers’ precision of language, his enormous empathy, and his razor-sharp sense of humor allow him to walk the treacherous tightrope of sentiment without ever falling into the abyss of sentimentality. He makes the reader care passionately about the quotidian troubles of his characters. Powers’ command of language and his unique voice offer a profound and affecting glimpse of dashed dreams; boyhood exploits; a miscarriage; dementia; deaths of parents, students, friends; and a unique brush with death at age twenty-nine. The persona is as nuanced as the character in a novel. This collection lives at the intersection between the dueling world-views of the book — In Praise of Heart Attacks and In Fear of Heart Attacks. While reading this engaging collection, the reader ultimately understands that despite the arguments Powers posits in favor of a swift and painless death, life with all its disappointments and heartaches is undeniably gratifying. This book reminds me how grateful I am to be alive.

      — Jennifer Franklin

      Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar

      Poems

      Jack Powers

      Copyright 2018 by Jack Powers

      Cover Image Copyright 2018 by Chris Powers

      Cover design by Russell Nelson.

      Cropping credit: Brian Hochberger

      Photo credit: Hector Pachas

      All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be duplicated in any way without the expressed written consent of the publisher, except in the form of brief excerpts or quotations for review purposes.

      ISBN: 978-1-936135-67-7

      Published by:

      Golden Antelope Press

      715 E. McPherson

      Kirksville, Missouri 63501

      Available at:

      Golden Antelope Press

      715 E. McPherson

      Kirksville, Missouri, 63501

      Phone: (660) 665-0273

      http://www.goldenantelope.com

      Email: ndelmoni@gmail.com

      Author’s Note

      Writing a poem is an act of self-indulgence and generosity – depending on the day and the poem. So I’d like to first thank you, dear reader, for reading these poems. I hope it’s a generous day.

      I’d also like to thank the whole village of idiots

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