Seb Doubinsky's short, quiet poems are little explosions of
epiphany. "A rose is a rose but not a rose." "20,000 lightnings in
the night but no illumination." A worn down, broken toy is actually
a sign that the child is growing up. A bird not chirping makes the
poet realize that the bird is indeed there and we need the poet to
describe it and sing its song. These poems soothe, startle and
illuminate as great poetry should. And like any real literature, I
can read them over and over and make new connections, have new
revelations. 'California Raisins, ' the fantastic long poem that
concludes the collection, is a meditation on the poet's long
awaited return to California. It is exactly the mythical California
that he remembers, with "Kerouac's melancholic fog" and "Sandburg
trains" and yet California is also an empty parking lot with
"Safeway brown bags and Gucci shoeboxes." The poem is both a
celebration of this beautiful, sunny state and an elegy for the
failures of culture. Doubinsky's little explosions indeed
illuminate.
Matt Bialer
Author of Bridge, Already Here and ARK
Seb Doubinsky's collection, Spontaneous Combustions catches us off
guard with a riveting arsenal of language--and with the 'shock and
awe' of everyday life. These pristine and startling snapshots
happen upon us, then at a moment's notice, enters our interiors.
These spare and sleek poems are crisp testimonials to the flaws,
follies, and fragile shadows that follow through the hallways of
joy and sorrow at the very epicenter of what it is to be human, "My
bones rattle like drums." This smallest moments ask for this poet's
astute gaze and keen sense of observation, baring witness to the
most ordinary and spontaneous of daily moments. Doubinsky
compresses riffs with cadence of language and etches the searing
ontological chemistry down to the basic elements. These poems tease
and torque with images full of both harmony and discord: "shock of
knuckles against a jaw," then offers a door inside a door-and dares
us to enter "where spring has just left the room" and "this poem is
two minutes late." These poems are vibrant with energy, and remind
us of the irrational, dangerous, complex and evocatively rich small
moments of our lives. Doubinsky sings us into our own
nakedness--sizzles and parses the silence, grace, and exacting
rituals of nuance
Cynthia Atkins
Author of In the Event of Full Disclosure and Psyche's
Weathers
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