'To fall is to be human. We fall in love, fall asleep, and fall from grace. And in this epoch that we have called the Anthropocene, we are witnessing nothing less than the fall of nature.
'This extraordinary collection, the fifth by the prize-winning poet David McCooey, covers the full tragicomic spectrum of falling: from pratfalls to tragic demises, from accident-prone parents to ruinous celebrities.
'Within its unifying thematic focus, The Book of Falling is tonally and formally diverse, attending with great artistry to the calamities and absurdities of history and the contemporary world. The collection comprises of satires and elegies, inventive poetic autofictions and biofictions, and innovative photopoems, employing found photos and photographs by the author. This is a collection that welcomes its readers, even as it plunges them into new ways of understanding the beautiful, fallen worlds that we inhabit.' (Publication summary)
'Ha!' The chief laughed again. 'Only one story and what would that be? 'The fall from grace. - Megan Dunn, Tinderbox
'On a recent award-judging panel, I found myself once again in a conversation about what makes a book of poems “cohesive” – that is, what makes it a book-length experience, as distinct from a single-poem dip, a chapbook dive or, indeed, the narrative journey of a novel.'(Introduction)
'In a world both foul and fallen, where delusion, death, and unassailable Dummheit seem to wait on every corner, what can poetry do that warrants our rapt attention more than every other kind of distraction? Justin Clemens voiced the common lament when he wrote, ‘No-one reads poetry anymore, there being not enough time and more exciting entertainments out there.’ The issue, he said, is ‘a materialist problem that has always proven fundamental for poets: how to compose something that, by its own mere affective powers alone, will continue to be read or recited’ (‘Being Caught dead’, Overland, 202, 2011). That clinches the dilemma rather well. And yet, entertainment or not – and effective or not in their affective power – poetry collections seem to endure as a place, of Lilliputian dimensions, to encounter other worlds and world views.' (Introduction)
'In a world both foul and fallen, where delusion, death, and unassailable Dummheit seem to wait on every corner, what can poetry do that warrants our rapt attention more than every other kind of distraction? Justin Clemens voiced the common lament when he wrote, ‘No-one reads poetry anymore, there being not enough time and more exciting entertainments out there.’ The issue, he said, is ‘a materialist problem that has always proven fundamental for poets: how to compose something that, by its own mere affective powers alone, will continue to be read or recited’ (‘Being Caught dead’, Overland, 202, 2011). That clinches the dilemma rather well. And yet, entertainment or not – and effective or not in their affective power – poetry collections seem to endure as a place, of Lilliputian dimensions, to encounter other worlds and world views.' (Introduction)
'On a recent award-judging panel, I found myself once again in a conversation about what makes a book of poems “cohesive” – that is, what makes it a book-length experience, as distinct from a single-poem dip, a chapbook dive or, indeed, the narrative journey of a novel.'(Introduction)
