Overview

""True Believer is Jeff Kass at his best: reflective and clobbery, nerdy and dynamic, witty and wise.""-Adam Mansbach, author of Go the F*ck to Sleep and The Golem of Brooklyn In True Believer, Jeff Kass intertwines fiction with reality as he delves into the origins of the Marvel superheroes, explores how the Marvel saga informed his own worldview, and implores us all to continue to believe in the forces of good Through lyric and narrative poems, formal and informal verse, and even a trio of limericks, Kass's poems both retell classic comic book tales and recall his personal experiences being a True Believer-attending New York City Comic-Con with his childhood friends, wishing he could control the weather while coaching his son's baseball team, and growing up reading about the Jewishness of The Thing, the Golem-like member of The Fantastic Four, which impacted Kass's understanding of his own identity. An ode to what Stan Lee called his devoted readers, True Believer is a call to arms and an invitation to discover the heroic in ourselves. If we can't be super-powered heroes, we can endeavor to be what those heroes embody: perseverance despite personal doubt, determination in the face of calamitous odds, and faith in the notion that humanity is worth saving.

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9781938603266

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Reviews

“If you ever wondered what a villanelle about supervillains would look like, then face front and read True Believer. Jeff Kass’s collection of Marvel-themed poetry is obsessive and witty — I regret only that he didn’t find a rhyme for 'Excelsior'!” —Gavin Edwards, co-author of MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios ""True Believer is Jeff Kass at his best: reflective and clobbery, nerdy and dynamic, witty and wise. In these poems history meets myth, the epic intertwines with the intimate, and nostalgia joins forces with imagination to seek out justice. Best of all, Jeff is clearly having fun here, and you will too."" —Adam Mansbach,  author of Go the F*ck to Sleep and The Golem of Brooklyn “In True Believer, Jeff Kass recasts figures from the Marvel universe into spirited ghazals, villanelles, odes, limericks, and sweeping lyric epics that interweave form with memory, power, dignity, reckoning, love. In each of these poems, Kass interrogates an ethics of care across geographies and timelines, moving across personal histories to the communal. These are glimmering poems that tackle the heroic, the collective, the comic, the intimate, the fantastical, the daily, the strange. I read this book cover-to-cover, entranced by these poems’ sonic joys and glinting word-work, and deeply moved by this poet’s unyielding attention towards the human and the humane. Undoubtedly, Jeff Kass is a poet to treasure—who teaches all of us what it means to live with magnificent heart, vibrant imagination, and the rigors of hope.” —Carlina Duan, author of Alien Miss “As a person who knows, first hand, just how many people have been touched by Jeff Kass’s pedagogy, poetry and personhood, it is a pleasure to encounter this collection which, at last, acknowledges the often over looked superpowers he possesses. In these poems there is so much praise for the overcoming of obstacles. There is so much respect for accountability and forgiveness, for justice and mercy. These poems honor the practice of hope, the everyday kindness, the sacrifice for community and the labor of growth. All these small acts are made mighty and heroic in Jeff’s poems and it’s the kind of work we need right now.  In a world where problems can feel insurmountable, True Believer reminds us that no gift is too small to make a mark; reminds us that there’s a hero in us all if we can find a way to trust in ourselves and each other.”  —Lauren Whitehead, writer, performer, and professor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts

Author Information

Jeff Kass teaches Tenth Grade English and Creative Writing in Ann Arbor MI. He's the award-winning author of Knuckleheads, 2011's Independent Publishers Best Short Fiction Collection of 2011 as well as two full-length poetry collections, My Beautiful Hook-nosed Beauty Queen Strut Wave and Teacher/Pizza Guy, a 2020 Michigan Notable Book. He has taught poetry classes and workshops to thousands of students and is a recipient of a prestigious 2023 Jack Hazard Fellowship for writers who teach in public schools.

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