Abracadabra, Sunshine

(Paperback)

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Description

Abracadabra, Sunshine is a series of ever-turning letters written to lovers, friends, and family as a testament to human perseverance and to art-making as a continuous defiance against the often overwhelming complexities and hardships of existence. Darting from the Czech Republic to the Andromeda Galaxy, from the films of Godard to the tales of the Brothers Grimm and the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang, these poems foreground our animal need for love and connection against the background of our historical obsession with destruction. By turns dour and deeply hopeful, Booths poems extol the communal and healing powers of vulnerability and love.

Reviews

"Witchy in its uncanny imagery, seering, and searing, Dexter BoothsAbracadabra, Sunshineis an intricately woven spell, a mating of letters with the magic of anatomy. This booksthis bodysbeauty, exactitude, and unflinching witnesshaunt, as some truths burn like houses and the people who run into them. Here, lyric utterance as address and artifact takes shape through a kaleidoscope of returning phrases, images, and narratives: Booths is lyricism as chrysalis."Shira Dentz, author ofSisyphusina

"Mysterious, lovely, and written with sensitivity and craftsmanship, Dexter L. Booths second book is about what it means to care for one another in a world where sorrow is often camouflaged by the body. Booths genius is that he is able, through perfectly constructed images of imaginative depth, to relay a pervasive sense of compassion, clarity, and awe."Sandra Simonds, author ofAtopia

"Booth is a storyteller with elegant metaphors and references to mythology and the natural world, but what is most distinctive about his poetry is the way he juxtaposes seemingly unrelated images and events, while 'attempting / to form an argument.'Poetry Foundation

"Dexter L. Booth's Abracadabra, Sunshine is one of the year's best poetry collections."Bustle

Author Bio

Dexter L. Booth is the author of Scratching the Ghost (Graywolf Press, 2013), which won the 2012 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was selected by Major Jackson. Booths poems have been included in the anthologies The Best American Poetry 2015 (edited by Sherman Alexie), The Burden of Light: Poems on Illness and Loss, and The Golden Shovel Anthology honoring Gwendolyn Brooks. Booth was a finalist for 20162017 COG Poetry Award. He was awarded an artist residency at Yaddo in 2017 and another at the MacDowell Colony in 2018. Booth is currently a contributing editor forWaxwing Journal, a PhD candidate and Provost Fellow at the University of Southern California, and a professor in the Ashland University MFA program. He resides in Alta Dena, California.