my lungs are a divebar

by Walter Moore

Overview

Dr. Walter Moore (BA, MFA, Ph.D.)--lauded bard who teaches in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University--presents this dive bar book of guttural knowledge. Set in rural Indiana and urban Washington (some Texas too), these are "tween" poems for the everyperson. Poems that celebrate the all-but-forgotten beautifuls . . . an awards ceremony that offers saint statues to degenerates.

Some words:

"Walter Moore's poems are a hell of a ride down a hard highway. Read this book." --Jesse Donaldson

"Hilarious, painful, and outrageous - often in the same phrase. Drawing from overheard fist fights, willfully eschewed observations, and half-a-lifetime of wrong turns turned right, Walter Moore crafts nail-sharp poems and prose explosions with a kind of screaming, laughing brilliance that is not be missed. These pages will slap your eyes until everything you see shines." --Owen Egerton

"Here is an honest underworld of poverty, booze, smoke, fighting, loving, debt, work, and redemptive friendship. The players are self-deprecating and cocky, punkish and tender, absurd and sincere as they make fun of and try to hang on to their troubled America. Walter Moore is a terrific poet whose voice is soaked in the millennial experiences of music, film, media and seeing through bullshit." --Henry Hughes

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780999713846
Publisher:	Emp
Publication date:	04/01/2019
Pages:	104
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.25(d)

About the Author

walter moore: ba. mfa. phd. cbd. thc. lived in about 20 towns/cities/countries, resided on street, in car, penthouse, condo, apartments, houses between, greyhounds. poet writer performer dancer sleeper friend partner. chainsmokes but plays table tennis at a professional level, enjoys secondhand papasan chair, treats roaches like fingers-drinks pea soup out of glass, buys cheap beer & steals expensive hottubs, votes with waters and illuminates food trucks. his waterfall is an idea. teaches at oregon state university-and lives and plays in corvallis, oregon, with dog lloyd and lady friend erica.

Editorial Reviews

“In a time when many books seem eager to flaunt their ethics, Walter Moore’s my lungs are a dive bar offers a refreshing departure. There’s a striking negative capability here, an impulse to approach everything and everyone with both a side-eye and a dose of empathy. These poems are gritty, unflinching, cagey. But for all the anti-epiphanic moves Moore makes, he allows for tenderness and beauty, as seen in the remarkable poem “family history.” Here, there’s a desire to retrace a lineage back to something “before any / violence / to write about.” The futility of such an action is one of this book’s startling moments of tragic wisdom. This is the voice of a casual prophet, a rapscallion, a hoarse cough in the back of a dark bar, a bloodied knuckle dragging across an iron window grate. It’s one you won’t soon forget.”

—Corey Van Landingham, Antidote, Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens

“Hilarious, painful, and outrageous - often in the same phrase. Drawing from overheard fist fights, willfully eschewed observations, and half-a-lifetime of wrong turns turned right, Walter Moore crafts nail-sharp poems and prose explosions with a kind of screaming, laughing brilliance that is not to be missed. These pages will slap your eyes until everything you see shines.”

—Owen Egerton, Hollow

“Here is an honest underworld of poverty, booze, smoke, fighting, loving, debt, work, and redemptive friendship. The players are self-deprecating and cocky, punkish and tender, absurd and sincere as they make fun of and try to hang-on to their troubled America. Walter Moore is a terrific poet whose voice is soaked in the millennial experiences of music, film, media and seeing through bullshit.”

—Henry Hughes, Bunch of Animals, Men Holding Egg

From the Publisher