The Impossible Picnic
Mark Tursi’s Impossible Picnic sets up camp not on grassy Romantic heights but on the astroturf of our mental backyards and interiors. In its wild juxtapositions and deadpan humor, one hears unsettling echoes emanating from the “vapory camaraderie” of modernism. Here “the world is all this, plus the world,” as the title propels us toward a super-abundance that only initially seems “impossible.”
-- Elizabeth Willis
Bold and clear words set in a bracing array of different forms. The poet’s words capture backyard events and sweep across vast distances and great stretches of time. There are intense emotions here, longing and desolation, and exhilaration and hilarity; there are sarcastic and cruel reactions. Surges of longing and lust are devious and uncommitted. The reader is enriched by all the perplexities Mark Tursi’s ravenous eyes churn up.
-- Alphonso Lingis
Mark Tursi is in the forefront of the young poets for whom the word "poem" means an act of intelligence and of emotional investigation which can take any form and investigate any area of human suffering and joy. His work is tough, and, beautiful in a new engagement.
-- Bin Ramke
Mark Tursi is co-founder and co-editor of the online literary magazine, Double Room: A Journal of Prose Poetry and Flash Fiction. He received his MFA from Colorado State University, and he is a current instructor and PhD. candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Denver. His poem, Overlapping and Oblivious to the Other (http://www.peterconners.com/images/Broadside1.jpg ) was recently selected for publication by the Park Avenue Broadside Series. His reviews and creative work appear regularly in literary journals, and his awards include the Marija Cerjak Society Award for Avant-garde and Experimental Writing, the Paolucci Prize for Italian American Writing (honorable mention) and two Academy of American Poets Prizes.
Book Information:
· Paperback: 87 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] ( 2007 )
· ISBN:1-934289-28-0
· LCCN: 2006940039
$14
