Emergency Anthems by Alex Green
“There were lines in almost every poem in this book that made me shout out loud….Emergency Anthems is THE book I will be recommending to all my friends. Today’s book of poetry believes discerning readers will be doing the same for years. Alex Green’s first book is so much better than I am able to express.” –Michael Dennis
by Alex Green
Pub Date: January 15, 2015
84 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1-936767-37-3
Print $15.95
Ebook/PDF $9.99
“Alex Green’s work blossoms on the page like small explosions. A surf-side Spoon River tinged with Chandler, Dali, and David Lynch. Neon sunsets, lost girls, grifting tennis instructors, and dazed surfers with bite scars shaped like lightning bolts. And through it all, the dark, swift flash of sharks. Serious and hilarious, Green’s pop culture satire lunges with the same deft surprise as those sharks.”
“Green’s short pieces read like secrets, someone sharing a passion, a bias, a humiliation, a love. They crash into your ears like the surf, and you flip the page, awaiting the next beauty, the next set of waves.”
“Alex Green is the uncrowned poet laureate of the last day of Summer and his first book is an absolute stunner—rich with metaphor, confessional honesty, and melancholy narrative. In Green’s sun-battered landscape, it’s always the last day of summer, nothing worked out the way it was supposed to, and the optimistic pop songs in the background play a jangly counterpoint to real life disappointments. In the afterglow, he finds humor, revelation, and that much maligned old measure of poetic meaning: beauty. Green forgoes opaque linguistic ornamentation in favor of coherent narrative, honesty, and lyricism. His gift for sudden and surprising metaphors is unmatched. This is a collection to return to over and over again and one that marks the debut of an important and refreshing poetic voice. Emergency Anthems is incredible, my favorite book of poetry of the last five years. Maybe of any five years.”
Brandon Jordan Brown at Fox Hunting:
“Emergency Anthems uniquely portrays a Californian microcosm of life in general—all around the narrator people are dying, relationships fail or never had the chance to in the first place, and there is a pervasive sense of heaviness behind every happy moment.”
Paul Gleason at Stereo Embers:
“Emergency Anthems succeeds brilliantly in linking the personal to the political. Better, it demonstrates the way in which one’s inner experiences of alienation simultaneously derive from and contribute to a heartless society in which the best people can hope for is to survive.”
Jason Hess at NewPages:
“The unique world of these pieces has, I hope temporarily, bled into my own. I don’t know what Green’s magician looks like, but everywhere I see people who might be the magician, performing the greatest trick ever. When I see a face I half recognize but can’t quite place, it’s the magician’s face. Since reading Emergency Anthems, whenever I tune my car radio while waiting at a stoplight, every unintelligible snippet of vocal-static has become a voice whispering California.”
Nancy Davis Kho at Midlife Mixtape:
“What I loved about reading this slim little book is how much it replicates the experience of listening for the first time to an album that you are destined to wear out. . . . [E]ach poem story is a little universe in itself, satisfying even when it suggests there’s more to the story.”
Largehearted Boy, Book Notes Series:
“[A]n impressive debut poetry collection imbued with pop culture and satire.”
Click here to stream the spotify playlist for Alex’s Book Notes at Largehearted Boy.
Alex Green was born in California and raised in the East Bay. A two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, his work has appeared in RHINO, The Canary, Mid-American Review, and Barrow Street. He is the author of The Stone Roses (Bloomsbury Academic), currently teaches at St. Mary’s College of California, and is Editor of Stereo Embers Magazine. You can visit him at www.alexgreenbooks.com.
For the magazine Largehearted Boy, Alex Green created a musical playlist that relates to his new book, Emergency Anthems. Read his liner notes by clicking HERE, then listen to each song on Spotify!
