Overview

Storage Shed asks the reader to think of shedding an unsteady self while also considering a shed, a small barn in suburbia: The theme of the fragmented self is present. The poems remain an attempt to slow the reader down, pulling the reader out of the humdrum world of platitude and cliche of everyday language imbued with cynicism. Each contains cascading effect of little epiphanies. From beginning to end the poems provide a world of thought while engaging in play as a child to expose relativism and contemporary cynicism and foster vision for tomorrow. Schiller's play drive may best describe the style: ""It is union of the unconscious and reflection that makes the poetic artist."" Meta-modernism may best describe its heart.

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Reviews

""Murphy's poetry unfolds in an uncanny valley of sorts, where the landscape is both disturbingly post-human and credibly recognizable. These poems are airtight, laced with a delicate hodgepodge of technological absurdism and intergalactic longing. The reality in Murphy's lines is that our tools of escape--meditation, exercise, neighborly courtesies--are ineffective substitutes for a future in which present-day planet Earth, Murphy's main antagonist, can be left behind. Taken as a whole, the book evokes the sensibility of Naked Lunch with only about a quarter of the surrealism, a tough truth to confront."" --Katie Sions, Editor-in-Chief, Rumble Fish Quarterly ""Rich Murphy's poetry magnifies the world, with its villains and heroes, through an unflinching eye. His poems suggest a need to understand--from understanding who we are and where our purpose comes and goes, to understanding why we learn and record what we know to connect with the past and the future. He often repeats words or sounds in a way that breaks down our comprehension of those words and what they signify. He works wonders with syntax, calling for readers to actively participate to feel the impact of the poems' associative or dissociative reverberations. Rich Murphy's poems present our world's modern complications as clearly and vividly as bebop jazz through a kaleidoscope, enticing me to reread and pick up sounds I didn't catch the first time around, out of my own need to understand through his lens."" --Dan Carey, Poet and Educator ""The genius of consumerist culture is that it enforces a kind of myopia that supports it, preventing us from noticing the steady retreat of our humanity from the noisome culture around us. Rich's particular genius is his ability to see the connections, the invidious logic of this culture. . . . His gaze towards a Stevens-like recentering, a refocus around his own pressing humanity."" --Robert Smart, Professor Emeritus of English, Quinnipiac University ""Each poem is a clean, confident vector of thought from start to finish. Rich Murphy distills associational webs of thought into seamless, purposeful poetic machines--the craft of a master."" --Christopher Fields, Editor, Neologism Poetry Journal

Author Information

Rich Murphy's poetry collections Inside Story, First Aid, Meme Measure, Space Craft, and Practitioner Joy were published by Resource Publications at Wipf and Stock. He has published several collections of poetry. His poetry has won The Poetry Prize at Press Americana for his collections Americana (2013) and The Left Behind (2021). Voyeur won the Gival Press Poetry Prize (2008).

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