Poetry. "Geoffrey Gatza's poems go straight to the point. From one to another the plane is consistent, the tone both literate and congenial; the feeling, one of an assessment of options while moving through choice to definition, a definition-in-progress of how to be, allowing large time outs for horseplay, an inventory of asides that end up occupying large chunks of mind. The book as ethos—you can live with it—you wish—why not?"—Bill Berkson.
Author City: BUFFALO, NY USA
Geoffrey Gatza is author of four books of poetry including, Dreadful Quietude, A confused saturation of Pre 9/11 America & Supermen (2005); and I Wear a Figleaf Over My Penis (2006); Black Diamond Golden Boy Takes Bull By Horns (2007), Thanksgiving Poems: a feast to honor Charles Bernstein, Forrest Gander, Kent Johnson, Robert Creeley & John Ashbery (2007) Gatza is the editor and Publisher of BlazeVOX [books] and associate director of Starcherone Book. BlazeVOX Books has published over 55 volumes, mostly poetry, and will publish approximately 20-25 more each year during 2007 and 2008. Gatza is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY (1993) and Daemen College, Amherst, NY (2002). Served as a U.S. Marine in the first gulf war and as sous chef at the Mansion on Delaware. He lives in Kenmore, New York with his girlfriend and two cats.
Reviews and Other Links
Edric Mesmer @ Galatea Resurrects
“‘Poetry expects poets to do their duty,’ writes Geoffrey Gatza in ‘Tempus Fidget.’ GG certainly does his duty by us, poetry readers. In so many ways. His vast publishing energy, so much to be grateful for. And in these pages you will find unmistakable evidence of a perhaps even greater benison: many terrific original works. This is one of the brightest new voices in poetry today.
SECRETS OF MY PRISON HOUSE is a consistently exciting, nervy collection of mind-moment-heart-truths that will slip inside you and unpredictably grow. A Gatza poem inscribes (as the great cover photo promises) the ‘tears of a clown wandering in the city. Vividly and freely colored by the golden crayon of choices,’ the poems like a clown's tears may enter your busy day for a while and quickly enough wash away. But not from the whacky inner sanctum of feeling. And only until night falls.
Steel is heavy, steel is art.
I'd rather speak to the cat.
Yes, and yes.”
—Tom Clark
“I want to say that Gatza’s poetic inventions get inside my mind and change it, ‘stopoped’ in this uncomfortable era where elegance is mismatched with a kind of directness that zeros in and rockets. Inventions that make one think twice and look again. ‘Well strike me up a gum tree.’”
—Hoa Nguyen