Perkins, D: POST-MODERN BLUES

Perkins' debut collection, I May or May Not Love You, arrived alongside the maelstrom of the 2020 pandemic and with most interviews and readings cancelled, he retreated to his study, surrounded by the hundreds of books of, on, and about poetry he had collected over his years of bookselling and decades of working in book publishing, and began work on creating a new (and perhaps provocative) poetics for himself--pondering over what contemporary poetry ought to do and how it should mean, what it ought to be and say--even how it might appear on a page to best convey what Madame LeMuse was gracious enough to throw his way. Post-Modern Blues is the result of those cloistered, intensive, and absorbing months. The same themes that stalked I May or May Not Love You are in Post-Modern Blues: love, lost loves, mortality, time, death, sex, connection, a soupçon of politics, the weather, and the vicissitudes of daily distraction--and yet more love, because obsessions do not change. There has been a vigorous new discipline applied to these poems, not without humor, all the while attempting to hew to E.M. Forster's exhortation to "Only connect," seeking an intimate relationship between author and reader. New emphasis on the music of words, their affinity to each other in internal rhyme, assonance, and alliteration come into play without sacrificing meaning in their interplay. Perkins is unafraid of addressing pain--but always goes in search of joy. It may be a voice to be reckoned with.