Chaos is the New Calm: Poems

(Paperback, First)

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Description

Chaos is the New Calm expands the parameters of the sonnet form, putting rhymes in unusual places, inventing new stanza structures, and addressing a variety of subject matter ranging from travelogue to inner monologue, from social commentary to solitary musing. These poems are alive with sound, rhythm, and lyric insights into the world. Wyn Cooper's poem "Fun" was adapted by Sheryl Crow for her hit song "All I Wanna Do." He collaborates on music and spoken word with novelist Madison Smartt Bell. Cooper is co-organizer of the Brattleboro Literary Festival. He consults for the Poetry Foundation's Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute. From Verse Wisconsin Online: "These poems move along at an energetic pace often progressing by plays on words and a kind of free association logic or, to put it another way, a sort of "six-degrees-of-separation" type of logic between both people and things."

Reviews

"Wyn Cooper has produced an exciting book that resounds deliciously. His poems can be deftly succinct even while they roam out of the body. The poems in his fourth book, Chaos is the New Calm, span landscapes and speak with wit and often with an even-handed rhyme." -- Midtown Review "In his new book, Wyn Cooper offers plain-spoken poems remarkable for their subtle echoes and balance of cultural sophistication and bare, formal construction. In these poems, the human condition is an infernal condition where the restlessness of the spirit and the intellect is only cooled by a steady, meditative gaze at our lives, that is then offered up as a distinctive sound that sings our beauty." -- Major Jackson

Author Bio

Wyn Cooper has published three poetry collections, including Postcards from the Interior (BOA, 2005). His lyrics were recorded by Sheryl Crow for her hit song "All I Wanna Do." He collaborates on spoken word/music recordings with novelist Madison Smartt Bell, organizes the Brattleboro Literary Festival, and in 2009 worked for the Poetry Foundation at the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute.