Apocalyptics

'Thank the gods for poets like Varn who stand undaunted at the prospect of unmasking the “bloodied face of history” as inextricably tied to the most pervasive prophecies of religion—those stories that leave “not a creature…unshivering.” Varn’s Apocalyptics shies from neither grandiosity nor grotesquery, neither high nor low society, for isn’t it precisely the blood—some stranger’s bodily fluid—that is to save? From “dumpster diving,” ghosts take flight. From “rancid butter,” a flock of magpies. Enter this text prepared to rub shoulders with archetypes amidst a house of mirrors in darkness, to open old tomes with your teeth and drool enough to smudge creation. And of all the “thou shalt nots” you can recover from the rubble, only remember one: Do not be afraid.' —Dylan Krieger, author of "Giving Godhead 'While reading the poems in Derick Varn’s Apocalyptics “we mend our own spines,” we experience what is human as being “sore from all the changes.” These poems put flesh and muscle on the spaces of time between, the slippage that makes up, desire and disappointment in human nature. The poems remind the reader, through form and content, that the erosion of time shapes us into who we are, individually and as a culture. Varn cuts away the dead weight in language and experience to give the reader the essential, the existential mortar needed to mend “mal-shaped minds.” The poems Varn has crafted in this book are “thick bread,” oxygen that will turn the knot in a belly “into something akin to a heart” that mends bones of broken men and women. Poetry lovers (new and old) will feast on the breath in these readable, human poems and heal into themselves.' —Rich Murphy, author of "Americana" and "Body Politic" 'When each heartbeat is a floodlight, poems erupt like those in C. Derick Varn’s Apocalyptics. Wittgenstein said, and as used as epigraph to one poem, “You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.” Some of these poems “bend” but some also go all the way to “break.” The results transcend tragedy, though. How can it be otherwise when the results are poems, including some that set “language on fire”—as in “You’re always / claiming the high road as it washes / away.”' —Eileen R. Tabios, author of Murder Death Resurrection