10 CRASS POEMS
Writing is a strange thing; you put words down on paper and others read it and somehow you’ve moved someone without realizing it. It’s like songs – one line jumps out at you and it’s with you for life. That’s what these poems do – remind you of a certain place and a certain time.
Never a bad thing to be moved. Well done.
-Steve Ignorant, CRASS
PARK
Josh Medsker’s PARK is an incantatory meditation on a delicate, yet resilient ecosystem. This poet lends reverent attention to the smallest details in nature, while joyfully mapping the transitions, ruptures – and yes, the yield and capitulations of the land to civil engineering. There is a timbre in many of these poems that suggest the poet’s deep appreciation of haiku, if not in form, in the simplicity and elegance of their cadence. A masterful addition to Medsker’s repertoire, PARK is a book a reader may return to again and again, and still find new depths.
– Laura Page, author of Dove, Coyote
In PARK, Josh Medsker writes that ‘so much is lost/between seeing a leaf/and writing about it,’ but through this collection, we see, and get to embrace, all of nature, from the Latin names of trees, to the moon, to the modern detritus of a ‘baby blue and white face mask.’ These poems invite us to ‘come closer’ to our world, and it is a joy to do so through this collection.
– Sarah Nichols, author of These Violent Delights and Hexenhaus
In the tradition of Whitman, we meet our dying natural world with song. Josh Medsker’s gift for joy and wonder is authentic and rare and we are its beneficiaries. PARK is a triumph of craft and verve as Medsker has unearthed the beating heart. New Jersey should crown him a native son if they know what’s good for them.
– Rogan Kelly, poet and editor of The Night Heron Barks
Josh Medsker’s PARK is an exquisitely rendered book of poems about a place. Traces of Dickinson, Williams, Cummings, and Gomringer remind us how poetry’s past remains available in the present, while Medsker’s deep feeling and precise language keep the poems grounded in a closely observed everyday. I enjoyed every poem.
— Roland Greene, editor of The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Fourth ed.
Josh Medsker’s collection is about what restores you when you’re mostly in solitude surrounded by nature. It is an invitation to daydream to the sounds of birds, trees, earth, grass, creatures and such. What affirmation it is to find that plenitude can be found in what thrives in the natural world. He recreates and immerses us in that experience in the most direct, delightfully sensory ways. Terns call… Kip! Kip! Kip! Come!
– Irene Toh, publisher of Red Wolf Editions
CACOPHONY
Josh Medsker has put together a collection of poems inspired by the writing of both HP Lovecraft and Nick Blinko of Rudmentary Peni. Grotesque artwork accompanies each poem—tons of skulls, souls flying from bodies ,and the like. If this stuff is in your wheelhouse, you could do way worse.
–Michael T. Fournier, Razorcake.
The 108 pages of poetry include a copious amount of black-and-white art (53 internal drawings) by Aaron Morgan, who captures well the bizarro-style poetry. Some of them I imagine are like an acid trip, others thoroughly engaged with the absurd, in fact, the theater of the absurd. Others chant like an incantation/invocation which seems to be influenced by contemporary rock-n-roll or silly songs. The author does speak of the influence of a 1988 album by Rudimentary Peni—a British anarchist punk band. The book’s title is adopted from the album title. There is also a measure of irony and satire, which I consider as elevated forms of humor. But the collection is also largely influenced by Lovecraft—his themes and biographical elements. It is often dark, ominous, schizophrenic. The blurb on the back of the book by a Lovecraft scholar, S.T. Joshi, echoes Medsker’s tribute to Lovecraft, who further says of Medsker’s work, “his scintillating, impressionistic poems throw off an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of images—by turns chilling, poignant, and grimly ironic.” I concur. Enjoy this strange and stimulating work.
—John C. Mannone, SFPA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association)
MEDSKERPEDIA
From July 2015 to October 2019, I wrote one poem every day, each corresponding to the entry in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. At the end I had written 1,265 poems.
If this isn’t fun, if this isn’t playful and daring and difficult, well, then, I guess just call me boring. I can’t help but find the zest and determination Medsker brings to the project infectious. A specific type of discipline is needed to partake in Medskerpedia, to make each new poem a poem, not a warm-up writing assignment or linguistic exercise. Medsker acknowledges this difficulty, and faces it by consistently shifting in tone and form. He exerts a willingness to challenge himself in terms of acquiring new knowledge with each new entry, and executes each challenge with differing rhyme schemes and lineation, and by mixing forms and traditions. At the heart of the project a simple reason beats. Medsker is doing this because it’s fun. Good, old-fashioned fun.Medskerpedia is not just about writing poetry. The project educates its readers about different forms and histories, and opens up discussion regarding concepts of Poetics that might not necessarily have been talked about before. This, for me, declares its worthiness. When we think about the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics, or any Encyclopedia for that matter, we often think of discolored, dusty pages of information. Medsker brings life to that vast source of knowledge through his unique intelligence and candor.
– Abriana Jette, Stay Thirsty
With this fascinating and unique project, Josh is settling in for a long slog. The literary equivalent of walking from Alaska to Argentina. – Jackson Ellis, Verbicide Magazine
Strange and Daunting.- Yellow Chair Review
Always interesting, often knocks my socks off. – Trish Hopkinson, Rock Canyon Poets
Fascinating. – Mary Bast, Editor in Chief, Bacopa Literary Review
Intriguing! – Boston Literary Magazine
His most ambitious project yet! – Buffalo Eliot
Massive. – Red Wheelbarrow Review
Love this. – Dr. TJ Eckleburg Review
Wildly fearless. A fascinating literary journey. – The Tishman Review
INTERVIEWS
Medskerpedia Interview at TrishHopkinson.com
Josh Medsker 