Awe and Other Words Like Wow

Kat Georges is an internationally known poet and playwright, who cofounded San Francisco’s Marilyn Monroe Memorial Theater in 1992, where she served as co-artistic director for eight years. Her books include the poetry collections Awe and Other Words Like Wow, Our Lady of the Hunger, Punk Rock Journal, and Slow Dance at 120 Beats Per Minute. Her work has appeared in journals worldwide, including The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Thunder’s Mouth Press), Arriving at a Shoreline (Great Weather for Media), From The Inside: NYC Through the Eyes of Poets Who Live Here (Blue Light Press), The Verdict Is In (as editor; Manic D Press), Love, Love Magazine (Paris), and Ladyland: Anthologie de Littérature Féminine Américaine (13E Note Editions), and many other publications. Her nonfiction prose and essays have been published in San Francisco Examiner, Orange County Register, La Habra Daily Express, and more. She was born and raised in Southern California, where, following her graduation from California State University, Fullerton, she published The Eye Magapaper, an acclaimed music journal covering the SoCal punk scene in the early 80s. She is cofounder and codirector of Three Rooms Press. She lives in New York City.

High Praise for Awe and Other Words Like Wow“Kat Georges’ Awe and Other Words like Wow offers a powerful beacon for contemporary dystopias. These poems celebrate embracing our authentic self, creative genius, and therapeutic moments in nature as opposition to society’s ravaging materialism. This book dazzles with its visionary witnessing, spiritual epiphanies, refreshing humor, anthems, and odes to love, reminding the reader that all life is holy.” —Lisa Panepinto, poet, Where I Come From The Fish Have Souls “This Book! These poems! This poet! The intelligence! The kindness! The love! Awe Now! Dig Wow!” –Gary Lawless, poet, In Ruins, Caribouddhism“If, as Emily Dickinson said, ‘hope is the thing with feathers,’ Kat Georges gives us many feathery things in this smart, beautiful, heartfelt collection.” —Julia Watts, author, Needlework and Lovesick Blossoms“Awe and Other Words Like Wow is truly human, kind, and aware, bringing us back to the heart of now . . . wow.” —Neal Taylor, co-founder, LA Dada“Life makes different sounds depending on the weight of contact—a clarity and pleasure Kat Georges won't let you miss! Poems that collide with precision—Moments existing in traces connected leading to language—I see what only you can feel and yet I remember—The function of memory's constant creation is on these pages.” —Fork Burke, poet, Durch die Blume“Awe and Other Words Like Wow, Kat Georges’ generous new collection of poems, offers the reader a multitude of joys. Georges’ urges us to open our eyes to the small pleasures and beauties that we might miss while on our devices. In the delightful poem, “I Want to Marvel at the Universe But All I See Are Bricks,” the poet catalogues a spring season in New York City: “an orchestra of pedestrians chatter in the warm sun,/a radio broadcasts seventies soul.” This is a book that encourages the act of awe and “our deep deep roots / blooms of dreams / too resilient to crush.” —Maw Shein Win, author, Storage Unit for the Spirit House“When you look beyond the fierce persona Kat Georges presents in performance, you might be surprised at the tender heart of her poems. Her new collection, Awe and Other Words Like Wow, is full of hope delivered with an exuberant voice. Georges is a keen observer of urban life. It’s not that she doesn’t see the grit, but she hears a siren as a soprano. In the midst of calamity, don’t we all want a day when life, “a jigsaw puzzle which, for a time, sits on display without missing pieces,” the way she entreats in her opening poem, “Awe.” This is a poet who, in the face of a sister’s breathless report about Yosemite Falls and its thundering 2400 foot drop of snow runoff, can turn to her window above Bleecker Street to find “streams of people / it’s spring in New York City,” every bit as exhilarating.” —Karen Hildebrand, author, Crossing Pleasure Avenue“Kat Georges' Awe and Other Words Like Wow is a terrific collection of poems that crackle in your imagination and your heart, highlighting those moments of astonishment, surprise and yes, a bit of heartache, in parlance that's vivid, playful, and eloquent. Georges opens her soul and in so doing raises our spirits, a gift to all those who love language. This is poetry at its finest.” Richard Modiano, Director Emeritus Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center“All true poets embrace the challenge of simulataneity—expansion and contraction, effusion and distillation, squeezing an idea down to a golden nugget while at the exact same time letting the damn thing flow. This is what makes the poems of Kat Georges so special . . . This is poetry that pops and flows—rhapsodic, philippic, giddy and wise. This is a proving grounds for Kerouac's boisterous, gleam-eyed mad ones—delirious, desirous, joyous, burning like fabulous yellow roman candles in the self-exploding night.”  —George Wallace, Writer in residence, Walt Whitman BirthplacePast Praise for Kat GeorgesFor Our Lady of the Hunger“Poet Kat Georges hungrily devours love, politics, memory, sex, feminism and whimsy and transforms them into a muscular poetry demanding to be read aloud.” —Ron Dakron, author, Hello Devilfish“A series of thought-provoking poems that use everyday vernacular to fashion a persona that walks right off the page. There is variety of style and mood here that takes the reader through the urban jungle through the eyes of a woman who has seen, and thought about it, much. Deeply textured and immensely readable.” —Joanie Zosike, actor, founder of NY Dada“Kat Georges writes with fierce wit about girlhood and womanhood and rock and roll. This collection has my favorite of her poems, “Lithium,” which perfectly nails that moment between freewheelin' adolescence and broke-ass adulthood when you don't know whether to laugh or cry or just tear shit up. Eat this book!” —Meagan Brothers, author, Weird Girl and What’s His Name“Compelling writing that is urban and contemporary with humor in the mix.” —Writing Thru ItFor Three Somebodies: Plays about Notorious Dissidents “Brilliant in the abstract.” —Library Journal“The works of Kat Georges pack a real punch. That's an understatement. I was reeled in by the energy and the layers of art apparent in each play.” —Ashley Adams, author, Passages North“The writing plucks at strings of thought and left me feeling I had experienced something important.” —David Loux, author, Chateau Laux“Brilliant, original, enthralling.” —Lisa Panepinto, poet, On This Borrowed Bike