Optic Subwoof

Douglas Kearney has published seven poetry collections, including Sho (Wave 2021), which is a finalist for the PEN and the National Book Award, Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry, and the California Book Award silver medal for poetry. He has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others. Kearney teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities and lives in St. Paul with his family.

"Kearney's prosody is miraculous.....I can't think of another writer as gifted as Kearney is at sound."—Ken Chen, NPR“Reading Kearney’s poems is like being inside of a crystal — depending on the time of day and how the light is shining through the crystal, the poem’s meaning can change. It is truly a disorienting prismatic experience."—Victoria Chang, LA Review of Books"Kearney's exquisite poems dissolve our sight, force us to speak aloud, and compel us to hunt and find within the illogic logic of our lives. Patter is its own genius music—revolutionary, intimate, and everyone's"—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen

• ContentsYou Better Hush: Blacktracking a Visual Poetics #werewolfgoalsRed/Read, Read/Red: Putting Violence Down in PoetryNote on collaboration: Red/Read VersionI Killed, I Died: Banter, the Poetry Reading, and Self-DestructionAppendix: Q&A with Cave Canem