Description
Poetry. Taking as a point of departure the retail utopia of the American mallscape—a composite of town square, garden and space station—LOST HORIZON spirals out through interstate and rail to touch national parks, local attractions, truck stops, big box stores, strip malls, tattoo parlors, oil rigs, flower shops, and baggage claims. Throughout the incessant movement of the book-length poem, unbroken by stanzas or sections, Farrell privileges observation over judgment and seeks out the crossroads between cultural myth and brand image. The poem speaks from between the mall fountain and the wishing well, the Disney princess and Spenserian queen, the noble hero and the voyeur. LOST HORIZON is a poem that catalogs and indexes the collision between fantasies of high and low.
Author Bio
Nathaniel Farrell was born and raised in Western Pennsylvania. He holds a doctorate in English Literature from Columbia University in New York City. He is the author of NEWCOMER (Ugly Duckling Presse)—a personae poem narrated by an anonymous soldier and set in an undefined military campaign—and LOST HORIZON (Ugly Duckling Presse), a long poem inspired by the American mall, interstate landscapes and suburban pastorals. He teaches composition at Washington University in St. Louis and hosts a weekly experimental music program on 88.1 KDHX, St. Louis' community-supported, freeform radio station. Farrell's poetry has been published in 6x6, New York Nights, Greetings Magazine, VLAK, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Recluse. His collages have been exhibited at Bushel (Delhi, NY), and Some Other Ways—his collaborative poetic project with Jessica Baran on the first month of Trump's presidency—was part of the World Chess Hall of Fame's Imagery of Chess exhibition.
Author City: SAINT LOUIS, MO USA