UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Theodore Worozbyt

Winner of the 2007 Juniper Prize for Poetry

Letters of Transit is a passport to the space between: prose and poetry, reverie and memory, death and fecundity. Its invitation is a journey without destination, a ramble, a thrill ride, an open-ended ticket. But it maps an uncanny territory, populated with ominous doctors, proctors, theorists, forgers and game show hosts, whose agendas seem no less threatening than the intrusions of red spitting monkeys, biting spiders, monster hornets, unseen shrieking creatures. One ranges through its pages with an electric sense of visiting places impossibly recognizable—the dream realm of a collective unconscious. Its attractions are part freak show, part museum, part mausoleum. Theodore Worozbyt brings a rich and intricate vision to a world both gorgeous and grotesque, where one must suspect every detail of being a crucial clue.

“These letters Ted Worozbyt has issued us are themselves in constant transit, from allegory to idyll to soundscape to dream; from passion to humor to terror to joy; from a painter hawking Balthus forgeries on eBay to dissection sessions in science club to Michael Jackson's Thriller to an effort to empathize with a piñata. You hold in your hands a passport to a truly surprising, delightful, and even devious imagination. Open it this instant! You'll never look back.”

Joel Brouwer, author of Centuries

Theodore Worozbyt holds an MFA in creative writing and a PhD in literature from the University of Alabama, where he currently teaches. He is the author of The Dauber Wings.

Poetry
72 pp.
$14.95 paper, ISBN 978-1-55849-655-2
April 2008

about placing orders on our secure server
ADD TO CART | VIEW CART | CHECKOUT