Description
Poetry. Chris Green's RÉSUMÉ sees life as a series of jobs: pimp's assistant, lost pet psychic, petting tent attendant, target changer, aviary security, etc. Any job is both unspeakably ordinary and mercilessly strange—stock broker or pimp's assistant, the same. And here, slipped between poems of work, a series of 'Jobless' poems reflects a recurring state of being. Also in the book, poems about the jobs of vital relatives—in Green's family, mangy is not a bad word—all of them with perfectly strong legs, all chasers with nowhere to run. In the end, the work of poetry becomes a refuge in RÉSUMÉ—a stillness at the end of the day.
"This a wonderful cycle of poems. As Studs Terkel once wrote, 'Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.' Through the vehicle of various jobs, roles, labors, and employments—manual, artistic, emotional, literary, familial, etc.—Chris Green gives us a lyric tour of human complexity, oddity, behavior and occupation. He has a novelist's powers of observation. RÉSUMÉ is full of humility, wit, smarts and heart, and all kinds of quiet astonishment. Studs would have loved it." —Amy Gerstler
"These clear-eyed yet inventive poems about work offer a hard-won wisdom that lifts us above suffering to understanding. Green's is a marvelously spare and colloquial voice with the kind of detail that cherishes and transforms our lives, that compels us with the authority of experience. His material is his own and others' brutal and toxic jobs, which in the hands of such a skillful poet, provide a vision that reaches beyond the subject to his spare but complex epiphanies."—Christopher Buckley
"Working odd jobs going nowhere, the fear of futility, the problem of money, the uncertainty of life—such are the burdens of youth. In RÉSUMÉ, Chris Green resurrects and transforms such lost periods of life. He sees that every job teaches, affirms that even the lowliest job is a step. RÉSUMÉ is not merely a record of employment—it is art employed so that human dignity can be redeemed through understanding and wisdom."—Richard Jones
Author Bio
Chris Green is the author of four books of poetry: EVERYWHERE WEST (Mayapple Press, 2019), RESUME (Mayapple Press, 2014), EPIPHANY SCHOOL (Mayapple Press, 2009), and THE SKY OVER WALGREENS (Mayapple Press, 2007). His poetry has appeared in such publications as Poetry, The New York Times, Court Green, Prairie Schooner, and Columbia Poetry Review. He has edited four anthologies including I Remember: Chicago Veterans of War and the forthcoming Poetic Justice: A Poem by 100 Chicago Poets on Gun Violence (Big Shoulders Books, 2020). He also started the Poetic Justice League, a forum for collaborative political poetry. He teaches in the English Department at DePaul University.
Author City: EVANSTON, IL USA