Poetry. "A wonderful book and a big, huge quantum leap for Anselm Berrigan, whose previous work I have also enjoyed, but this book is really something different, it gives you the passionate can't-put-it-down experience of reading a great novel, and technically it's so assured you don't even notice how he, Anselm, is producing all his effects. The hero of ZERO STAR HOTEL goes on a mythic quest; the story's told very simply, with lots of gritty detail and an attention to surfaces and realities that grabs your interest and won't let go. I can't speak highly enough about ZERO STAR HOTEL but in the words of Paula Abdul, Anselm, you have raised the bar for all of us, you're my American idol now"—Kevin Killian.
Author Hometown: NEW YORK, NY USA
About the author: Anselm Berrigan is the author of six books of poetry, most recently NOTES FROM IRRELEVANCE (Wave Books, 2011) and FREE CELL (City Lights Publishers, 2009). Other books include TO HELL WITH SLEEP (Letter Machine Editions, 2009), SOME NOTES ON MY PROGRAMMING (Edge Books, 2006), and ZERO STAR HOTEL (Edge Books, 2002). He is the current poetry editor for The Brooklyn Rail and co-editor, with Alice Notley and Edmund Berrigan, of The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California Press, 2005) and The Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California Press, 2011). A member of the subpress publishing collective, he has published THE SELECTED POEMS OF STEVE CAREY (2009) and Your Ancient See Through by Hoa Nguyen (2002). From 2003-2007 he was Artistic Director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, where he also hosted the Wednesday Night Reading Series for four years. He is Co-Chair, Writing at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, and also currently teaches writing at Pratt Institute and Brooklyn College. He was a New York State Foundation for the Arts fellow in Poetry for 2007, and has received two grants from the Fund for Poetry. He lives in New York City, where he grew up, with his wife, the poet Karen Weiser, and their daughter Sylvie.
Reviews:
http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue02/reviews.html#review01
