Great Balls of Doubt: Poems and Prose Poems

by Mark Terrill, Jon Langford (Illustrator)

Overview

Great Balls of Doubt gathers 96 of Mark Terrill’s poems and prose poems from limited-edition chapbooks and broadsides (many now sold out or no longer in print) and from hard-to-find journals and magazines, as well as his recent, previously uncollected work. Lavishly illustrated with 25 drawings by Jon Langford, Great Balls of Doubt delivers images and sentiments ranging from the real to the surreal to the elegiac, with no shortage of humor along the way. “Doubt is an unpleasant condition,” ­Voltaire once remarked, “but certainty is absurd.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781891241666
Publisher:	Verse Chorus Press
Publication date:	07/21/2020
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

MARK TERRILL is a native Californian and former merchant seaman. He has lived in Germany since 1984, working by turns as a shipyard welder, a cook, for the post office, and as road manager for rock bands, all the while publishing numerous collections of poetry and prose, such as "Bread & Fish" (The Figures, 2002) and "Diamonds & Sapience" (Dark Style, 2017). His work has appeared in print and online in more than a thousand journals and anthologies, including City Lights Review, Bombay Gin, Empty Mirror, Jacket, Diagram, Rattle, RHINO, and Talisman, and been translated into French, German, and Portuguese. Terrill is also the English translator of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann ("An Unchanging Blue: Selected Poems 1962-75", Parlor Press, 2011).

JON LANGFORD is a musician and visual artist who lives in Chicago. Born in Newport, Wales, he first came to prominence with art/punk music collective the Mekons, who met at Leeds Universityin 1976 and have been performing together ever since; their most recent album is "Deserted" (2019). He has also released many recordings as a solo artist and with other bands (the Three Johns, the Waco Brothers, Four Lost Souls, and more). Langford’s art has been collected in two books, "Nashville Radio" (2006) and "Skull Orchard Revisited" (2010). In 2015 he was the artist in residence at the Country Music Hall of Fame, which commissioned him to paint a series of portraits for its exhibition “Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City.” He is represented by Yard Dog Gallery in Austin, Texas.

Table of Contents

Down at the Gate 9

The Verge 10

Waiting for Pernod 11

A Poem for Blondi 12

A Poem for Metropolitans 14

A Poem for Philosophers 15

Rimbaud Reloaded 16

The Fall Collection 17

"A Pair of Darts" 19

Terra Nova 20

The Time before Time 21

In the Shark Bar 22

The Allegory of Time 24

November Poem 25

Memo from Siddhartha 26

A Poem for Raconteurs 27

Bonjour, Monsieur Sartre 29

Idiot Savant 30

Being and Nothingness Redux 31

A Poem for Raptors 32

Open-Heart Burglary 34

The Curve 35

Like a Heroic Landscape 36

A Poem for Dialecticians 37

A Poem for Radios 39

Florescence 40

Neither War nor Peace 41

California Poem 42

Great Balls of Doubt 44

Rue Férou 45

Sunday Morning Coming Up 46

The Cleft 47

April Poem 48

Bardo Kitchen Cycle 49

Godzilla vs. Ratiocination 51

A Very Long Time Revisited 52

A Poem for Patriots 53

Interzone 54

The Age of Enlightenment 56

Out Back 57

Ultramarine 58

A Poem for Vestiges 59

Waterhead 61

A Poem for Monosodium Glutamate 62

Journey to the End of the Mind 63

Out-the-Window Poems 64

Competitive Decadence 66

A Poem for Antediluvians 67

In Heaven 68

September Song 69

Barbary Coast 71

Magpie Sonata 72

Dialing In the Verities 73

The Art of Victory 74

A Poem for Heroes 76

The Antonym of Serendipity 77

The Descent of the Bohemians 78

The Specialist Years 79

Legacy 81

Texas Bar Turnaround 82

Mein Fucking Kampf 83

Heaven & Earth at War 84

The Vagaries 86

Benediction 87

A Poem for the Rear Guard 88

Rumors of a Divine World 89

A Poem for Lawnmowers 90

Prodigal Son 91

After the War 93

The Thin Line 94

Self-Portrait in Aisle Seven 95

A Poem for Typewriters 96

Pervasion 98

Interstice 99

The Turnstiles of Sin 100

What Runs the Game 101

The White City 103

Spleen Machine 104

In Memory of the Present 105

Yes I Did 106

Hour of the Wolf 108

Reality Is a Flavor 109

A Kink in the Arc 110

A Poem for Stoplights 111

Rituals of Impenitence 113

In the Rue de Babylone 114

The Key 115

Waiting for the Vulgarians 116

Superabundance 118

The Wheel 119

The Skin Inside 120

Parabellum 121

The Man from Monterey 123

Ode on Reality 124

Equipoise Redux 125

Coda 126

Editorial Reviews

Mark Terrill, the true poet and ‘forlorn observer’ of the world he sees as essentially forlorn, if not absurd, if not entirely hopeless. But his poetry is far from hopeless. It is a hard light to alleviate the situation of the world as he sees it.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

It is sweetly familiar to move thru the movement of Mark Terrill’s lines—his way, his path, his punch lines—the details of his physical life . . . But Great Balls of Doubt is more than his very sure tour of words on the page—he gives a dimension of culture and living in the moment that is very reassuring.

Joanne Kyger

An ally of the Zen wing of the New American Poetry of observation & witness, Mark Terrill’s poems receive inspiration from his expansive ‘radar dish of conscious­ness.’ A solid collection from a vigilant compañero of the real work.

Anne Waldman