Desertions by Caleb Puckett

Desertions
Caleb Puckett
staple-bound 44pp.
$9.00

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Caleb Puckett's Desertions, lush with alliterative vocabulary and wry irony, dares never to take itself, or the world, too seriously. But here is a deeper wit than we sometimes see in the poetry that makes us smile. “We think, therefore we think, that’s all,” he reminds us, deflating the grandiosity of the “new diesel, ostrich boots, fattened limousine calves” at the same time he implies their beauties. Puckett is a poet who well understands how to sight his readers’ pleasures through “the almighty crosshair of cross-purposes.

Lisa Lewis
Associate Professor
Director, Creative Writing Program
Oklahoma State University

Filled with inventive and unpredictable work, Caleb Puckett examines the role of “place” in pieces like ‘Cowboy Poetry’, as well as experiments with various forms and themes. Puckett is a product of the plains and this fact shimmers through his work with surprising results.

As well as working as librarian and teaching English, Puckett is a poetry editor for Nimrod International Journal. His work has appeared in many print and on-line journals, including Softblow, Starfish, HoboEye, Tryst, and Listenlight. He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma with his wife, dogs, and a gently used harmonica. Desertions is his first chapbook.

The Black Dinner Jacket

The stars twist into space like tarnished brass buttons
and I find I am badly suited for the foregone conclusion
that there is nothing in my pockets save the hint of rain,
which is itself an expired coupon, as faded and useless
as the menu handed to me behind the abandoned café
where bonfires smelt semiprecious metals into blades