Overview

Persistence of Perception is a strange, powerful poetry collection with the heart and soul of a live spoken word album, where the records skips the record skips through underground mansions and scat-man phrases, where faerie tales curl like kittens on windowsills and drifters mend their blues. Reid's poems are memory meals for the happy and heartbroken alike. He knits tight storytelling and sticky truths with threads of magic realism, hints of Eastern philosophy. Nathan J. Reid finds a way to catch us all between the canvas and the paint with poems about dying loves, traveling character actors, Batman underwear, and film reels joined start to finish. You enter into bizarrely beautiful planes of reality by reading this book, by swallowing its thoughts and reciting the sounds. Reid brings you from adult to embryo to child to adult again, offering a hand when needed, and always moving with a sweet and forward light.

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9781646622405

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Reviews

Nathan J. Reid writes poems that absorb, tantalize; are beautiful the way rainbow light refracts off wet skin. Do not open this book expecting a safe journey. Reid is adept at using memory as a directional finder, looping over and over; a radar seeking more substantial meaning than what we see on the surface. To Nathan, we are the firefly, existing in the moment of endless change and when this journey is over--having lived our bakie-wakie muncheon moment--we know the halves of our better selves...This poetry beat-boxes on the edge of your psyche. Coloring everyday objects into echoes, Reid's lip-synching sound waves are an explosive catechism. Fear not, dear reader, to enter his attic-- this hollow haunt of love --you will be better for the experience. --James P. Roberts, Author of Derne Runes, Spirit Fire, and Famous Wisconsin Authors Nathan Reid takes hackneyed metaphors and rusty instruments like Cupid's bow and reminds his readers why these images originally held such weight by making the smallest changes--changes that remind us of the dull ache that humans share, an ache that is often the only possible point of entry for profound feelings. With a relentless sense of exploration and growth, Reid's work beautifully navigates the space between hope and sadness, fantasy and realism, childlike whimsy and the harshness of adulthood. We follow him into spare rooms, hospital rooms, and intimate moments between lovers where, with a quick turn of phrase, he shifts the landscape from himself to us. These are poems that deftly alternate between rawness and transcendence, conciseness and expansiveness, grief and joy. --Emily Bowles, Author of His Journal, My Stella Nathan Reid's poems in Persistence of Perception are about love, night and day dreams, attics, shadow libraries, jukeboxes, actors, and memories on fire. These poems are skillfully wrought and tenderly offered. Reid is a word artist who gives us a complete collection of mended holes for our souls, like rose petals sizzling off the bone. Read him. --Bruce Dethlefsen, Wisconsin Poet Laureate (2011-2012); Author of Small Talk, Breather, and Unexpected Shiny Things

Author Information

Nathan J. Reid is a poet and spoken word artist currently living in Madison, Wisconsin. His work has appeared in Poetry Hall, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Bramble Lit Magazine, as well as other publications, and his chapbook, Thoughts on Tonight, was released in 2017 by Finishing Line Press.

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