Synopses & Reviews
I'm ill-equipped for this. I sit
by a fake fireplace
that frames a real flame.
I've been crossed
by two crows today.
Multi-vectored, Rogers's poems hum with life and tension, their speaker poised as mother, seer, reporter and daughter. They speak of loss and cold realities (misplaced charms of luck, a tour of an assisted-living facility, coins thrown into Niagara Falls). They also interweave dreams and visions: "O Lion, I am / an old handmaiden; I will not lay the pretty baby in the lap / of the imposter." Simple but evocative, at once strange and plain, Rogers's poems of address ricochet off the familiar "Dear Reader" or Dickinson's "Dear Master" ... Rogers's poems provide instructions for what to leave, what to take and what to fight. They act as selvage between the vast mother-ocean the mem of memory and the fabric we make of the uncertain in-between.
Hoa Nguyen, The Boston Review
How can we live with the kind of pain that worsens each day? Dear Leader explains through bold endurance, enumerated blessings and the artistic imagination. By pasting stark truths over, or under, images of strange, compelling beauty, Rogers creates a collage, a simulation of the human heart under assault, bleeding but unbroken. Part Orpheus, part pop-heroine who can paint the daytime black,” all, an original act of aesthetic violence and pure, dauntless, love.
Lynn Crosbie
Praise for Paper Radio:
Paper Radio jumped out at me and I cant say why, but thats what you want poetry to do, and I never want to say why. Because its real and talking to me. Because its bloody and horrifying beauty. Its the Clash and Buckminster Fuller, Auden and Bowie.
Bob Holman
Originally from the Detroit area, Damian Rogers now lives in Toronto where she works as the poetry editor of House of Anansi Press and as the creative director of Poetry in Voice. Her first book, Paper Radio, was nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.
Synopsis
A psychedelic remix of religious texts, memory, and borrowed biography, this collection sings a new kind of order into air.
Synopsis
I'm ill-equipped
for this. I sit
by a fake fireplace that frames a real flame.
I've been crossed
by two crows today.
'Multi-vectored, Rogers's poems hum with life and tension, their speaker poised as mother, seer, reporter and daughter. They speak of loss and cold realities (misplaced charms of luck, a tour of an assisted-living facility, coins thrown into Niagara Falls). They also interweave dreams and visions: "O Lion, I am / an old handmaiden; I will not lay the pretty baby in the lap / of the imposter." Simple but evocative, at once strange and plain, Rogers's poems of address ricochet off the familiar "Dear Reader" or Dickinson's "Dear Master" ... Rogers's poems provide instructions for what to leave, what to take and what to fight. They act as selvage between the vast mother-ocean -- the mem of memory -- and the fabric we make of the uncertain in-between.'
-- Hoa Nguyen, The Boston Review
'How can we live with the kind of pain that worsens each day? Dear Leader explains through bold endurance, enumerated blessings and the artistic imagination. By pasting stark truths over, or under, images of strange, compelling beauty, Rogers creates a collage, a simulation of the human heart under assault, bleeding but unbroken. Part Orpheus, part pop-heroine who can "paint the daytime black," all, an original act of aesthetic violence and pure, dauntless, love.'
-- Lynn Crosbie
'In Dear Leader, Damian Rogers re-invents the same-old poetic lyric to offers us one-of-a-kind insights on childbirth and party bars, rolling blackouts and old rock standards. Here, what looks at first like familiar language always reveals itself to be a rare mineral. And that's the magic: this is a poetry that refuses to be staged or to succumb to cliche or mannerism, insisting on celebration and condemnation, caution and cosmic vibrations. "Say you're a poet," Rogers advises us, tongue-in-cheek, "Maybe you mean / Hi, I have a lot of feelings." Striking that balance between one-liners and mourning is no small feat.'
--Trillium Award Jury Citation
Praise for Paper Radio
'Paper Radio jumped out at me and I can't say why, but that's what you want poetry to do, and I never want to say why. Because it's real and talking to me. Because it's bloody and horrifying beauty. It's the Clash and Buckminster Fuller, Auden and Bowie.
-- Bob Holman
Originally from the Detroit area, Damian Rogers now lives in Toronto where she works as the poetry editor of House of Anansi Press and as the creative director of Poetry in Voice. Her first book, Paper Radio, was nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.
Synopsis
Dear Leader examines the seductive loops of paranoia and longing, disordered thinking, and the pursuit of power. Ranging in form from the villanelle to experiments with the open field, this collection illuminates the blackest corners of a dream world in which women compete for the attentions of their gods and witches eat their lovers to survive, where even a trip to the post office carries the risk of descent.
Damian Rogers is the poetry editor of House of Anansi Press and the creative director of Poetry in Voice. Her first book, Paper Radio, was nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She has lived in Detroit, Chicago, New York, and now Toronto.
Synopsis
I summon the ghost of the Chevrolet dealership, the one
who drank Rothschild wine and cursed the federal reserve.
Is he revisiting the vines of Vietnam, or caressing his cache
of semi-automatics, the collection he kept in case of coup?
In her second book, Damian Rogers examines the seductive loops of paranoia and longing, disordered thinking and the pursuit of power. These poems work to repair the scrambled narratives of a nonconsensual reality through collage, stitching together forms ranging from the villanelle to experiments with the open field.
Dear Leader vibrates with a voracious intensity as it illuminates the blackest corners of a dream world in which women compete for the attentions of their gods and witches eat their lovers to survive, where even a trip to the post office carries the risk of descent.
Praise for Paper Radio:
Paper Radio jumped out at me and I cant say why, but thats what you want poetry to do, and I never want to say why. Because its real and talking to me. Because its bloody and horrifying beauty. Its the Clash and Buckminster Fuller, Auden and Bowie.
Bob Holman
Originally from the Detroit area, Damian Rogers now lives in Toronto where she works as the poetry editor of House of Anansi Press and as the creative director of Poetry in Voice. Her first book, Paper Radio, was nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.
About the Author
Originally from the Detroit area, Damian Rogers now lives in Toronto where she works as the poetry editor of House of Anansi Press and as the creative director of Poetry in Voice. Her first book, Paper Radio, was nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.