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Screaming At the World
Realistic Meat Substitute is a collection of poems covering themes ranging from conspiracy and commodification to digital alienation and political hysteria. Did you write these poems with a specific audience in mind, or was it a more personal endeavor?
I do a lot of screaming at the world in my poems.
Pointing in laughter, recoiling in horror. Singing with joy, sighing in relief where beauty and goodness can be found. It’s deeply personal, of course, sometimes cathartic. I write with the hope that it might resonate with pessimists and optimists alike—that my fellow human beings on planet earth can relate. But, if a machine intelligence (or something otherwise) gets it, too—great! Welcome aboard.
How do you begin a poem—image, phrase, rhythm, or idea?
I like to improvise and fiddle with language. Usually no plan, no preconceived ideas to start. I don’t want to know what the puzzle is until I solve it, I guess. Open the box, dump the puzzle pieces on the table and get started. Start with the middle or the border pieces? Let intuition be the guide. Musicality is also important. Paying attention to the beat and rhythm of the line, I’ll experiment and play with juxtapositions—see what might stick. What does it mean? What’s it trying to say? Sometimes I’ll have a scene or a situation in mind, so I’ll start with something descriptive of that image. Meaning, subject, theme—whatever the poem is “about”—that generally comes later, if at all.
Was it important for you to balance satire and intensity with genuine emotional vulnerability?
I think the better poems balance the head and heart, the emotional with the cerebral. Absurdity and irony, with sincerity. Tender, but with bite. If the satire works, it can activate the mind, make you smirk and think, but it’s also driven by emotion. It can be a way of coping with baffling contradiction, trouble, hurt and pain. But, like a ruthless, criminal gangster/bad guy from a story—there’s got to be some relatable humanity to the character, otherwise there’s no emotional investment offered to pull a reader/viewer into the story.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from Realistic Meat Substitute?
Well, here’s a few things. I hope they enjoyed the ride. I hope I earned the reader’s attention. Life is crazy. Poetry can be many things. Open up and pay attention. To quote artist/musician Laurie Anderson: “Don’t be afraid of anyone, get a good bullshit detector, and be tender.”
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left of the soul when everything else is artifice and imitation.”—Randomly Chosen AI Chatbot, after prompts by the book’s author to construct a blurb
for the back cover of Realistic Meat Substitute*
*AUTHOR’S NOTE: ABSOLUTELY NO POEMS CONTAINED IN THIS BOOK
Realistic Meat Substitute: Poems and Whatever Else
Realistic Meat Substitute is a jagged, feverish collection of poems and hybrid pieces that feel steeped in the fumes of late-stage American life. Across sections like “Uncanny Valley,” “Thoroughly Cooked,” “Frankenstein Complex,” and “Kool-Aid or Hemlock,” author Chris D’Errico writes out of a world saturated by conspiracy, commodification, digital alienation, political hysteria, ecological dread, and a stubborn, battered hunger for something more human.
What stayed with me most was the book’s texture: its collision of the grotesque and the lyrical, the absurd and the mournful. One moment we’re in the carnivalesque overload of “Post-Organic Afterworld” or “The Idiot’s Guide to Coup D’etat,” with their clang of slogans, grift, and synthetic identity, and the next we’re in something unexpectedly tender and elegiac, as in “Rock Formations,” with its dead friend Reggie and its gentle ache of memory, or “Departures,” which softens into grief, time, and farewell.
I admired the momentum of the language. D’Errico has a gift for startling phrasing and hard, memorable turns of image. He can be funny, ugly, and very beautiful in the space of a few lines. “Truth Is a Bust” turns truth into a whole unstable, disreputable character, grubby and theatrical and impossible to domesticate, and that poem captures much of the book’s method at its best: personification pushed until it becomes social diagnosis. Elsewhere, pieces like “NOLA Elegy” and “A Love Supreme” show he can do something looser and more melodic, letting place and music carry emotional weight without losing his edge.
I also loved the recurring fascination with sound, rhythm, performance, and noise, the sense that music is one of the few surviving ways to get back to the body, to breath, to soul. The book’s density occasionally asked a lot of me as a reader. Its mode is often accumulation, barrage, and incantation, which can be exhilarating, though in a few poems I felt the intensity of the language overshadowed some of the deeper emotional or reflective movement.
This is a collection deeply suspicious of false transcendence, macho mythmaking, internet brain-rot, and the various ways people trade complexity for certainty. Again and again, D’Errico returns to the emptiness of slogans and the seduction of ideological theater, whether in “Resist the Fallen World,” “Your Motherboard Doesn’t Love You,” or “The Mirage,” where he cuts through delusion with the plain imperative to go outside, listen to birds, pay attention to rain, traffic, physics, reality. The book is full of contempt for fraudulence, but it isn’t nihilistic. Under all the snarling satire, there’s a real plea for honesty, listening, embodiment, and moral wakefulness. Even the title starts to feel right in that context. So much here is about substitutions: synthetic feeling for feeling, performance for conviction, algorithm for conscience, spectacle for life. And beneath the book’s wild surfaces, I felt a sincere grief over what gets lost when we accept the fake thing as enough.
Realistic Meat Substitute wants to scrape, taunt, lament, and sing, sometimes all at once. That won’t be for everyone, but for readers drawn to politically charged poetry, surreal imagery, beat-inflected verbal riffing, and work that wrestles openly with the psychic junkyard of contemporary life, I think this book has real bite and real feeling. It left me unsettled, impressed, and more moved than I expected. I’d recommend it most to readers who like their poetry feral, intelligent, and unafraid of mess.
Pages: 63 | ISBN : 978-1917272131
Unconventional Narrative
All Told gathers a lifetime of poems shaped by place, memory, travel, politics, and aging, offering a wide-ranging portrait of one life lived across the American South, distant countries, and the quiet rooms where reflection settles in. Did you view the book as a kind of life story while putting it together?
Yes, in a sense, it’s a life story, or at least a story of my last 55 or so years on Earth. I think of it, along with Rites of Passage, as a personal legacy created from a large backlog of work reaching back to the 1970s. It’s a compendium of my poetry that I would like to live on after me, even if it lacks a wide circulation and serves only as a means of preserving a significant amount of my work for anyone who enjoys reading poetry and might find it interesting. It also gave me an excuse to dig through the whole body of unpublished work I’d saved over the years and organize it in a way that I felt would be aesthetically pleasing and offer its readers a perspective on my life and my struggle to create a sort of unconventional narrative that would reflect the changes in my life and my development as a poet.
Your poems often use plain, conversational language. Why does that style appeal to you?
I think the sort of plainspoken style of much of my work came about firstly through the influence of such modernist poets as Ezra Pound, H.D., e.e. cummings and William Carlos Williams, and the post- modernists, especially those in the New York School — O’Hara, Koch, Ashbery, Ignatow, et al. — who were attempting to break away from strictly metrical verse and traditional forms and appeal to readers who were highly literate but not necessarily steeped in literary history or the kind of verse taught in most university English courses back then. On the contrary, I followed many other poets of the time in taking the lead of Ezra Pound, who, around the beginning of the last century, envisioned a new style of writing that “will be as much like granite as it can be, its force will lie in its truth, its interpretive power… I mean it will not try to seem forcible by rhetorical din, and luxurious riot. We will have fewer painted adjectives impeding the shock and stroke of it. At least for myself, I want it so, austere, direct, free from emotional slither.” Secondly, when I moved to Türkiye in 1993, I soon discovered a school of poetry that illustrated this modernist dictum in the movement called “The First New,” headed by Orhan Veli Kanık, who dreamed of writing a poetry so stripped down that it even “dumped words.” This movement arose most significantly as a result of the change of the Turkish script from Arabic characters to the romanized alphabet most commonly used in Europe and the Americas. It also brought European influences into the sphere of Turkish writing, with translations by Veli and other poets of foreign poetry, such as that of the Surrealists. Along with my reading of 20th-Century Turkish poetry that followed The First New, I became aware of the provincial nature of American poetry, which showed little influence of Surrealism and other important developments in Europe that had strongly influenced contemporary Turkish poets. So my view of modern poetry changed radically after I moved to Türkiye, and my own writing began to reflect this change as well. I was elated when the poet Güven Turan, who edited my bilingual collection Galata’dan: the View from Galata, noted on its back cover that I was really as much an Istanbul poet as Orhan Veli, even though I wrote my poems in English. This direct, conversational style of writing came to define my own work, even as I tried to incorporate other aspects of modernism and postmodernism into the poetry I was writing then.
Many poems reflect on aging and reflection. How has your perspective changed over time?
I’ve tended to measure the course of my life in phases. This can be seen as well in the course of my poetic experience, wherein the dominant “themes” change from one phase to the next. For example, in my twenties the principal idea that directed my writing was that of a “Muse,” gleaned largely from the writings of Robert Graves, and this idea changed, or evolved, into a Jungian vision of psychic forces that replaced the Muse figure with a spiritual “you” that for several years animated my poems and infused them with a “meaning.” Other phases reflected my discovery of Taoism and Sufism, philosophies whose main principles I’ve adopted and tried to apply to all aspects of my life. I found that I could trace the movement of my life through these phases that have determined the nature of my development as a human being and writer. I can’t clearly articulate the phase I’m in now except to say that it seems to concern my present role as an elder in my “tribe” and involves a further consolidation of the ideas and experience that form the basis of the ongoing questioning and quests in my work and life.
Looking back over this collection, what surprises you most about your own journey?
I’m newly surprised almost every day by my incredible luck at being who I am and to have survived and, for the most part, enjoyed my life’s journey up to this point. I think the poems in All Told express this feeling in both direct and indirect ways. I’m not religious in a conventional sense, but I can’t help feeling that I’ve somehow been guided and protected by forces that exist somewhere beyond my individual perception or understanding.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Genetic Testing
The Killing Gene follows a genetic research team as they discover the gene pattern they believe is linked to violent tendencies and serial killers. Where did the idea for this book come from?
My niece was getting IVF, and I overheard that she had selected certain characteristics, eye, hair, skin, and educational background. Then I recalled my son’s genetic testing for Down Syndrome and cystic fibrosis, and it made me think about the pro-life/pro-choice issue. I wondered–and it’s in no way related to my niece’s child–after seeing parents being taken to court for the crimes their sons committed in a school shooting. What if there is a serial killer gene that is passed along to the children, which is triggered, apart from the nature vs. nurture theory?
Can you share a little about the research process required to put this book together?
First, I had to find other illnesses found in genes that are passed from grandparents, skip a generation, and affect the grandchild. I finally found a disease like cancer that affects the whole family or a gender only. I did not want to write a science book, but I had to mention basic genetic testing and technology like CRISPR that can identify genes and order.
Many characters are described as relatable and even flawed. Was that intentional to mirror the complexity of the book’s central question?
Yes, I went with the simple answer with triggers to activate the “killing gene,” a violent sexual act towards the grandfather, Malcom Lynn. The lead geneticist, Tatiana Mirzo, also had a sexual trigger that is kept silent but shows up during the act. The journalist, Maggie Rally, had old-school determination and limited time to solve the murders and was not afraid of getting too close.
Can we look forward to more work from you soon? What are you currently working on?
Yes, I have a new book, and I have about 90% done, but I had an accident and have trouble typing fast enough to finish. The new book is called The Suicide Council, inspired by Kurt Cobain’s suicide. I always wanted to know why, especially when the victim does not leave a note. So this is a fantasy, I do not know if it is classified as a thriller because it involves a Spiritual Council of saints and prophets who visit the victims just before they commit the action. They record why, but they have rules. They cannot change their mind because of free will. And close ones can find out why it happened only when they reach heaven. They can look up the files of the victim’s life filed by the Suicide Council. So I have a collection of stories about victims, different situations, and characters.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
From current choices for parents to make about what their babies will look like. In the near future, parents will be able to find a gene that will show a psychopathic tendency leading to violence. The parents will be able to decide on the birth of a child with Down syndrome. With characters involved with the geneticist’s background and suspecting colleagues, and a report that connects the dots on an ongoing Serial killer investigation with the help of the Main geneticist
Poetry Thrives on a Mystery
What We Hold No Longer is a collection of poems that circle around memory, aging, identity, and the haunting void that lies beneath it all. What inspired you to write this particular collection of poems?
I’ve recently become an avid reader of psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. Last year, one of his books introduced me to Jacques Lacan. Specifically, how our subconscious impacts language, and in turn, how we use language shapes desire. For a poet, what could be more delicious to explore? Ineluctably, even mentioning Lacan brings up his theories on the Void (The Thing) and religion. This, in turn, led me to Lacanian scholar Richard Boothby (Embracing the Void). Along the way, I also read a book by Phillips on our ambivalence towards transforming our lives (On Wanting to Change). Transformation is a particularly important topic at this stage of my life. What I did not anticipate in reading this book was the evocation of so many memories. As a pediatric psychoanalyst, Phillip’s description of childhood, particularly the excruciating years of adolescence, flooded me with things I’d long forgotten (eg, seeing my grandfather’s corpse at age 9, the inchoate sense of frustration, and seeking revenge on my parents’ reputation with a can of red spray paint, etc.).
Can you share a bit about your writing process? Do you have any rituals or routines when writing poetry?
I’m trying to understand my writing behavior. I appear to have a natural rhythm, whereby I’ll write a dozen poems over a month or two and then go silent for just as long. During the quiet months, I read more and pay attention to what I see and listen to: all the things popping up as thoughts and feelings. The poems “The False God’s Lullaby” and “New Year’s Day” were brief glimpses of people, just a few moments of an image that resonated deeply, and unexpectedly.
What moves me from outside triggers something poignant nesting deep inside: “The I of my other who moves silently with me” (The False God’s Lullaby). Also, I love editing. Paul Valéry once said: “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” I think he meant you can always refine and improve a poem. I try to limit my revision window to six months. Once a poem reaches structural stability (ie, I know what I want to say and the confines to say it in), I put it away for several days or weeks at a time. It’s important to understand that during initial composition, the poem’s neural map is being built using high stores of neurotransmitters. This is how we learn. However, it also prevents us from seeing inherent weaknesses when we’re still trying to get our thoughts written down. Taking a break for days or weeks reduces neurotransmitter stores. This removes the blinders to our writing, so we can see problems more readily and find better ways to say what we’re trying to convey.
How do you approach writing about deeply personal or emotional topics?
I think it is important during initial composition to just let things rip, because that is likely to be the most truthful. However, there is a balance to be struck. I’m reminded of a phrase from the Upanishads: “The path to salvation is narrow. It is as difficult to tread as the razor’s edge.” I view confessional poetry as an attempt to achieve psychic salvation. To shy away from powerful emotions creates a sense of falsity impossible to ignore. Yet, in the passion of writing, we can also say too much. Poetry thrives on a mystery, on what is left unsaid. That’s part of the art form I’m still working on improving.
How has this poetry book changed you as a writer, or what did you learn about yourself through writing it?
I have the sense in writing What We Hold No Longer that I’m beginning to mature as a poet. I’m not sure anyone else would agree. But there was something about the Lacanian cycle of poems that shifted my writing in a way I haven’t fully grasped. At this moment, I can’t imagine writing anything more profound or better composed than those poems. Time will tell. Every book I’ve written so far has enriched my sense of self and given me a sense of being more at peace with myself. Something that had eluded me before I’d written The False God’s Lullaby.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Such topics have been the foundation of his poetry explored in his previous works and have been expanded upon in “What We Hold No Longer.” As in his other works, poems are grouped together in themes. These themes approached from a deeply psychic perspective and include: personal transformations throughout life, existential encounters with “Nothingness,” the rise of fascism, loss, and the realm of an interior life (both our conscious narratives and our river of unconsciousness). What Gedaliah refers to as “the I of my other, who moves silently with me” (The False God’s Lullaby).
The poems in this current collection maintain characteristics that reviewers of his previous works have consistently noted. That “Gedaliah seamlessly blends philosophical depth with artistic expression, offering a deeply reflective journey through identity and human complexity, striking a perfect balance intellectual exploration and emotional resonance.”
A Means of Self-Healing
The False God’s Lullaby is a collection of poetry and prose that explores the beauty and tragedy of the human experience, taking readers on a journey through your memories and emotions using in-depth imagery. Why was this an important collection for you to publish?
I’m entering the last phase of my productive life when I’ve found myself having reached the end of so many other journeys. Although I’ve been writing poetry since 1990 (when I first became interested in it), it wasn’t until I had reached an existential nadir so-to-speak in June of 2023. New poems just seemed to flow out of me, and so I went back to edit others I’d written over the years that I thought were suitable for publication. Something (more accurately someone) inside me desired to speak. It’s the time in our life when we wish to leave something that might survive our absence.
Were there any poems that were particularly difficult to write? If so, why?
If you’re asking, “Was it difficult for me to expose my inner life?” the answer is no. I began writing poetry after my profound experiences at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. I’ve viewed my poetry as a means of self-healing (if you’ll excuse my use of a rather tedious California cliche).
How do you know when a poem is truly finished?
That is an interesting process question. It’s a matter of reaching a nodal point of comfortable satisfaction. This generally occurs within a week or so when the nagging feelings cease (eg. “Something’s not working but I can’t figure out what it is yet.”). Afterward, there’s a period of minor word-smithing that goes on for months. But finally, I have to tell myself to stop. There’s a point when “fine polishing” begins to weaken the poem’s impact.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?
I’m already deep into investigating and writing my third collection of poetry (and perhaps some prose) focused on the works of Jacques Lacan and others on topics such as the connection between nothingness and spirituality and transformation. It’s largely a continuation of my interests in the multiplicity of selfhood. The working title is The Shadowed Crossing from a stanza in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus.
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The poetry is presented by topics that move like moods. The collection begins with contemplations of what the author calls “interior worlds.” This comprises over half of the poems and are the first and last titled sections. Interior worlds are expressed in such poems as “Memory,” “Confluence,” and “Longing.” This is followed by “Closeness and Distance” with poems describing experiences of both sexual (“Absolution”) and emotional intimacy (“Endearment”), as well as withdrawal (“Disillusionment”). The mid-topic sections move into the darker subjects of mortality (“Wandering,” “Big Sur”) and despair (“Awaiting the Pandemic”). Pulling back from these dark explorations are the poems found in “Lightness of Being.” These range from metaphorically comedic sexuality (“The Drummer’s Advice”) to a gathering with friends (“Friday Dinner”). “Interiors Worlds” are returned to with a prolific, seven-part poem exploring the external and internal aspects of familiarity (“Home”) and ends with the poem from which the book is named (“The False God’s Lullaby”). The final section is a small collection of prose pieces that add context to many of the poems. It also ends with a work from which the title poem was created.
Two major themes form the basis of internal worlds. First is the notion expressed by Lou Andreas-Salome’ of primitive consciousness arising in-utero. The poet fuses this with Soren Kierkegaard’s notion that we internally possess a sense of “the eternal.” The second theme ponders the implications of evolutionary neurobiology: that we are largely governed by the ancient powers of our animal brain (eg. “Limbic, paralimbic structures”). What Freud called “The It.” These are explored in the poems “Confluence,” “The Ancient Within,” and “Otherness.”
Despite the deep, dark themes of life that pervade many of these works, the author endeavors to find for himself and his readers how these encounters unavoidably lead to a sense of endearment and gratitude for life itself. In this, the author reveals the influence of his most beloved poet, Rainer Maria Rilke; for whom the poem “Wandering Rainer” was written.
Pick Up a Plate & a Book
Sweet Emotions is a collection of poetry inspired by your mother’s cooking and her love of sharing it with others. Why was this an important book for you to write?
My mother’s passion for cooking & ability to create mouthwatering dishes always fascinated me. Her food brought people together, creating unforgettable moments filled with love & happiness. I wanted to capture those emotions & share them with others through my writing. Sweet Emotions is a way of honoring her legacy & preserving those cherish memories.
What is the one thing you hope readers take away from the book?
Above all, I hope that readers find a deep connection to the emotions & memories that food & words can evoke. I want them to recreate the warmth that my mother’s cooking brought into our lives. Also, I hope that readers are inspired to explore their own culinary passions, experiment in the kitchen, & create memorable moments with loved ones, just as my mother did. And keep seeking my words.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
Sweet Emotions is not just a poetry book. It’s a poetry book based on my heartfelt tribute to my mother’s legacy. The things she stood for & lived for every day. God, family, food & books. That poetry book with cooking because we love food so much that when I write, you will find elements of food that I decided to put a recipe. God, food & words brought people together. Through the pages of Sweet Emotions, I aim to inspire readers to infuse their own dishes with love & passion. Cooking is not just about nourishment but also creating everlasting memories. Pick up a plate & a book. Preferably my book.
What is it about food that you think brings out an emotional response in people?
Food has the power to evoke a range of emotional responses in due to several reasons. First & most important… nourishment & survival. We need it to carry on in life. The fact it tase good adds more.
Cultural & social significance… it brings many in touch with their history & different cultures together through leaning & happiness. Sharing meals promotes a sense of belonging & an emotional connection.
Comfort & satisfaction during difficult time having food together ease the pain.
Overall, the emotional response to food is deeply ingrained in our biology. It has the power to create joy, comfort, nostalgia & social connections. Making it highly sought @ times which I wish for my words. They won’t have the same sensory experience you wont smell, taste or feel the texture. But once you see & read my words you will get the emotional rush as they trigger memories.
Sweet Emotions
In Sweet Emotions, Kevin Bates, both an author and poet, offers readers an eclectic mix of romantic and introspective writings. This collection is not just a compilation of poetry; it also includes a unique blend of original recipes and semi-erotic illustrations. A notable aspect of Bates’ work is the integration of culinary themes, weaving food and beverage motifs throughout his poems. These compositions explore a spectrum of human emotions and experiences, ranging from love and admiration to memories and spirituality, with a few touching on the theme of conflict. The brevity of each poem adds to the collection’s distinct character.
The religious-themed poems in the book are particularly noteworthy. They provide moments for contemplation and introspection, adding a meaningful depth to the anthology. These reflective pieces resonate with heartfelt sentiments, offering a nuanced reading experience. The book presents an innovative format that blends various elements, creating a unique experience. The inclusion of recipes alongside the poetry adds an intriguing, unexpected dimension to the collection. While the fusion of illustrations with these recipes offers a distinctive approach, it also contributes to the book’s eclectic charm. The poetry itself, rich in its complexity, invites readers to engage deeply, presenting an opportunity to explore various layers of meaning and interpretation. As for the rhythm and structure of the poems, particularly when read aloud, they provide a distinct style that may prompt readers to reflect on the deliberate choices made in their composition.
Sweet Emotions is an ambitious endeavor that spans various literary landscapes. Bates’ work encapsulates the essence of passion and creativity, and though it grapples with inconsistency and ambiguity, it provides glimpses of wisdom and sincere emotion. The collection invites readers to immerse themselves in the complexities of love, spirituality, and the human condition.
Pages: 96 | ASIN : B0BSVN4JCF
