TIMESTAMP: The Daily Practice of Poetry

Breskin’s jaunty, wry—and always spot on—observations of our increasingly outrageous world pull us more deeply into that world, igniting our sense of responsibility, inciting us to act. It’s political poetry in the most enabling sense—it reminds us that the political is rooted in the polis—of the citizens; it reminds us that we belong—and that belonging brings not only obligations, but also kinship deep enough to resist what we must. And—hooray hooray!—his clear map of our plummet to imminent disaster also manages to be screamingly funny.   --Cole Swensen 

Out of the smashup of our vernacular—its mangled memes and wonked-out argot—David Breskin’s Timestamp reveals the invaluable quality that Thelonious Monk once called “Ugly Beauty.” Even as Breskin takes a good look at the worst, his sentences, lines and phrases stand as triumphs of the imagination. Horrific, vivid, hilarious, and strangely glorious, these are the poems the age deserves.  --Peter Campion