Now Lays The Sunshine By - Andrew Hughes (Book Thug)

Today's book of poetry:
Now Lays The Sunshine By.  Andrew Hughes.  Book Thug.  Toronto, Ontario.  2010.

Andrew Hughes is hilarious.  This is where Richard Brautigan sensibilities meet up with Ricky Gervais wit (read smart and wicked).

& The Gold Of Their Bodies
                                         Breton Girls By The Sea)

empty coffee can strung
from flagpole clanks
in wind
the voltage stencil of yr hummingbird
vertigo a colorful about brought
one of many stunning features
of my landscape
while golden Breton girls by the sea
go spinal
go nipples up
in the cathedral
& another bacteria Saturday
when the evening sun goes down

...

These short terse poems have a rat-a-tat-tat swagger, kind of like machine gun poems.  Hughes doesn't stop for breath much when he's throwing punches.

The New Wave Of American Heavy Metal

                                                for Russell Dillon

we fuckt up
  & we hate you
     for making us admit it

   but you were
a shining example
     of honest songwriting
          that night
               together     alone
                  onstage in
           the Grand Ballroom
 
                & what you thought
                         were dreams

                      just rags we used
                          to stop the bleeding

...

Andrew Hughes has the quick patter of a carny, the mind of a magi and a sense of humour of a dark Willie Nelson binging with Nick Cave.  This is fun stuff.

Pure Country

the best book of spaceships
kept me up all night
those first one thousand winters
a aspect of childhood &
a blast pattern
lost in the glass between days
                       ghostlonesome
w/ snowforce
it's yr first kiss Charlie
Brown & scale calls
into question so many things
what would I do w/o
the geese to mark the seasons

isn't it beautiful
the black hole at the center of every galaxy

...

Jay MillAr reading from Andrew Hughes book, Now Lays the Sunshine By

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Hughes divides his time between New York City and Boston.  His work has appeared in Forklift, Ohio, Cannibal, Spell, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Bimbo Jim, PUPPYFLOWERS, and others.  He is the author of Sweethearts of the Great Migration.

COVER BLURBS
"This is the way to "go nipples / up in the cathedral" with the America of everyday resistance against the everyday America. Andrew Hughes brings outlaw poetry back like a magically reattached foreskin! YES! Thank you for putting that THERE! Little in this world is more beautiful than a poet saying I could become / A new music to take w/ me after the summerlong. We love our poets if we have any sense, and Hughes deserves A LOT OF OUR love, deserves that we name our babies after him, Andrew girls and Andrew boys! They'll grow up to be the kids who bring the world the trouble it deserves, like the love our poets deserve. But this book or don't call me anymore! SERIOUSLY!"
     —CAConrad

"The poetry of Andy Hughes is wickedly funny, and frequently just plain wicked.  It is unselfconsciously of the time, and therefore alive to the movement of every moment. But he also possesses a strong sense of the classic lyric. This guy is clearly someone to watch."
     —Mac Wellman

"In Andrew Hughes' poetry a crackling diction meets a fear of ordinary things, but the pressure exerted by the reality of these things does not dissuade the poems from their bright chromatic sincerity or their mob deep engagement with imagination. Moving through a range of forms designed to hold together a body angling against unflinching troubles good and bad, Now Lays The Sunshine By makes for a sweet set of songs to carry. Though the darkness may surround us, in these pages risking emoticon folklore it isn't going to win."
     —Anselm Berrigan

www.bookthug.ca

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