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Kudzu Leaf Press
Athena Departs: Gospel of a Man Apart
Athena Departs: Gospel of a Man Apart
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In Athena Departs: Gospel of a Man Apart, Clifford Brooks tells us early on, "I reflect on the reasons / life refused to let me go." But his expansive poems are more than reflections, so much more. Brooks creates in his work places where the blues and philosophy both sing their songs of modern doubt and love, where downtown Athens, Georgia, can be home to Damon and Pythias but still have "Jackson's secondhand bookshop" with "collections written by Rilke, Neruda, and Simic," and where Granny and Dad and church and Grandfather and Momma share the world with Ovid and Odysseus, Penelope and Cupid and Old Man Scratch, Medusa and Thanatos and the Underworld.
--JON TRIBBLE, author of And There is Many a Good Thing
Clifford Brooks's Athena Departs is tornadic, both in its dizzying whirl of settings, images, and motifs and in its sheer elemental energy. We are picked up in Athens, Georgia and set down in Athens, Greece. He's a barroom denizen, then Orpheus, then Samson, then Doc Holliday. This work is purely genuine, wholly authentic. There is nothing faked here, nothing pretended to. Athena Departs is poetry fully meant by its creator, delivered with the force of a whirlwind.
--DAN ALBERGOTTI, author of Millennial Teeth
Clifford Brooks writes a passionate, eloquent poetry, as wide-ranging as the models he sometimes invokes, including the blues and the epics.
--ROBERT PINSKY, former Poet Laureate of the United States
Brooks is as energetic and creative a talent as I have seen in many years, with an untamed nature, a wild zest for poetry and life, with an imagination that reminds me of Frank Stanford's "The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You," "The Light the Dead See," and "The Snake Doctors."
--WILLIAM WALSH, author of Lost in the White Ruins
Clifford Brooks' poetry's uniqueness blooms from its denial to conform to the befuddling or the politically correct. His poetry is raw, carved from an emotional and explosive force--by turns manic and somber, heartbroken and heart-strong. His work reflects a vast intellect, but he has nothing to prove, other than the fact that he is, in his moving through life, a ghost, anachronistic in his passion. Most of these poems are elegiac, outspoken, and even tortured. However, none are tortuous. There are no linguistic games here, other than deft metaphor and subtle aestheticizing--the ornaments a poet knows must adorn the work to distinguish itself from prose, poetry's brassy sister. In this way, Brooks defies the conventions of many literary poets and creates a space for his own literariness, one borne from the romantic tradition of emotional recollection and powerful feeling, sometimes recollected in tranquility, sometimes confronted head-on with a bellicosity that can startle and surprise in interesting and often beautiful ways. Brooks is unafraid to bear the conflicts of his inner demons and angels--in doing so, he transcribes the freight he carries as a man both tethered to, and haunted by, his world of words.
--WILLIAM WRIGHT, author of Tree Heresies
--JON TRIBBLE, author of And There is Many a Good Thing
Clifford Brooks's Athena Departs is tornadic, both in its dizzying whirl of settings, images, and motifs and in its sheer elemental energy. We are picked up in Athens, Georgia and set down in Athens, Greece. He's a barroom denizen, then Orpheus, then Samson, then Doc Holliday. This work is purely genuine, wholly authentic. There is nothing faked here, nothing pretended to. Athena Departs is poetry fully meant by its creator, delivered with the force of a whirlwind.
--DAN ALBERGOTTI, author of Millennial Teeth
Clifford Brooks writes a passionate, eloquent poetry, as wide-ranging as the models he sometimes invokes, including the blues and the epics.
--ROBERT PINSKY, former Poet Laureate of the United States
Brooks is as energetic and creative a talent as I have seen in many years, with an untamed nature, a wild zest for poetry and life, with an imagination that reminds me of Frank Stanford's "The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You," "The Light the Dead See," and "The Snake Doctors."
--WILLIAM WALSH, author of Lost in the White Ruins
Clifford Brooks' poetry's uniqueness blooms from its denial to conform to the befuddling or the politically correct. His poetry is raw, carved from an emotional and explosive force--by turns manic and somber, heartbroken and heart-strong. His work reflects a vast intellect, but he has nothing to prove, other than the fact that he is, in his moving through life, a ghost, anachronistic in his passion. Most of these poems are elegiac, outspoken, and even tortured. However, none are tortuous. There are no linguistic games here, other than deft metaphor and subtle aestheticizing--the ornaments a poet knows must adorn the work to distinguish itself from prose, poetry's brassy sister. In this way, Brooks defies the conventions of many literary poets and creates a space for his own literariness, one borne from the romantic tradition of emotional recollection and powerful feeling, sometimes recollected in tranquility, sometimes confronted head-on with a bellicosity that can startle and surprise in interesting and often beautiful ways. Brooks is unafraid to bear the conflicts of his inner demons and angels--in doing so, he transcribes the freight he carries as a man both tethered to, and haunted by, his world of words.
--WILLIAM WRIGHT, author of Tree Heresies
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