Interior Art: Gregory Crewdson
Cover & Interior Design: Alban Fischer
Paperback, 128 pages, 8.25" X 6.5"
March 2014, ISBN 978-1-936919-25-3
THIMBLERIGGER
My god can he hide a nickel.
My god his tooth is gold and like a bullet.
And do you see the way the coin.
When he touches its face disappears.
And if he takes my hands, which I was saving.
If I place them on his table, which collapses.
It is almost too bright now, this setting.
This west where I have still not heard my numbers.
It is almost Black Friday.
And may I thank you for the ticket that wins nothing.
For the bag of mint too rotten to eat.
May I thank you for your death, and for your clothing.
Now, when it’s almost never closing.
When the door disappears, and the siren begins.
And my god if I could push my way past you.
American Barricade by Danniel Schoonebeek
$5 Digital Version Coming Soon!
About American Barricade
Chosen by C.D. Wright for The Volta’s 10 Best Books, 2014
One of Poets & Writers 10 Best Debut Poetry Books of 2014
With its limitless invention, emotional force, and profound social relevance, American Barricade is a groundbreaking first book and stands to influence the aesthetic disposition of its author’s generation.
—Boston Review
A bold, ambitious, unforgettable debut from one of our most exciting young poets.
—Timothy Donnelly
American Barricade explores the songs of personal and national histories forced to sing the tunes of economic and ancestral oppression. As though leafing through the pages of a fragmented American family album, Schoonebeek alternates between the voices of son and prophet, king and peasant, husband and enemy. These poems leap boundaries of generation, class, and race, and foretell the imminent collapse of American power structures and remind us that restoring them is only possible through love and human connection.
About Danniel Schoonebeek
Danniel Schoonebeek is the author of American Barricade (YesYes Books, 2014) and the forthcoming collection of poems Trébuchet (University of Georgia, 2016), a 2015 National Poetry Series selection. In 2015, he was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and recent work appears in The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, and The Baffler.
Reviews & Interviews
Review at Publisher's Weekly
Review at Boston Review
Review by Carrie Lorig at Entropy
Review by Brian Ellis at Nailed
Interview with Ben Sandman at The Rumpus
On Nectarines, poem and discussion at Poetry Society of America
Interview with Katie Naughton at Center for Literary Pubilshing
A Conversation with iO Poetry
