Proses

Garrett Caples is the author of Proses: Incomparable Parables! Fabulous Fables! Cruel Tales! (Wave Books 2024), Lovers of Today (Wave Books, 2021), Power Ballads (Wave Books, 2016), Complications (2007), and The Garrett Caples Reader (1999), a collection of outtakes, The Rise & Fall of Johnny Volume (2020), and a bilingual selection, Noches Apátridas (Unstated Nights, 2019). He’s also written a book of essays, Retrievals (2014), and a pamphlet, Quintessence of the Minor (2010). He’s the editor of Philip Lamantia’s Preserving Fire: Selected Prose (2018). He is an editor at City Lights Books, where he curates the Spotlight Poetry Series. He has a PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and lives in San Francisco.

• CONTENTSThe ThereministStep FootHector NiceNone NunsThe SneezeThe LemonVyvyan SourmanA.V.O.M.W.E.P.Pac-Man Fever

“Garrett Caples’s Power Ballads offers rhythmic insight into the youthful heyday of Generation X. Interspersing references to hip-hop culture, modernist poets, and classic rock legends, Caples uses his experience as an artistic insider to show us the rise of a new musical genre. In both free verse and prose poetry, the author delivers profound insights with lyrical prowess, using slant rhymes and alliteration to capture what growing up in the first MTV generation was like.”—Cherise Oakley, Rain Taxi“Caples (Complications) fills his newest collection with musicality and pathos, anchoring his playful language with ardent longing. Just like great power ballads, these poems are maudlin yet still authentically moving…A love song to Oakland, to idols, and to love itself, Caples’s raucous, tender, and tuneful collection lives up to its title.”—Publishers Weekly