Abstract
Ranging from the elegiac to sarcastic, humorous to furious, distant, alienated, amused, and intimate, the poems in Hot Stare America aim to balance social critique with praise, protest poems with odes, the blues with jokes, nostalgia, love, and a sense of hope for those people and places that have helped to shape their speaker's life and origins. From dramatic situations set in bars, rock clubs, restaurants, coin-op laundromats, classrooms, and adult bookstores, this musically formal manuscript traces the poetic legacies of the English language, versions of democracy we have inherited and will pass down, as well as the bizarre ironies, juxtapositions, and paradoxes that define American culture. The Clash once dubbed themselves "The Only Band that Matters." In a similar vein, this collection of poems ultimately settles on good love, drink, laughter, and music in all its forms as the only sources of redemption or escape that truly matter to its speaker, this protest singer.
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