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DUCK!
DUCK! brings together 100-ish pages of Brian Beatty's jokes, poems and stories.
Only in the pages of DUCK! will you find:
• Poems about the Marx Brothers, the Buddha and cartoon superhero Underdog
• The best of his hilarious jokey jokes from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, METRO and comedy stages across the Twin Cities
• Helpful tips for making soup and/or being the best werewolf you can be
• An erotic letter to Popular Mechanics
• A story dictated by Brian’s hound Hurley
What didn’t Brian include?
• The outdated story he published in Seventeen when he was an artiste
• His controversial journalistic exposé about Ann Coulter’s snake-y vagina
• All those boring narrative poems he published in lit mags 1989-1999
• An author photo of any kind
Only in the pages of DUCK! will you find:
• Poems about the Marx Brothers, the Buddha and cartoon superhero Underdog
• The best of his hilarious jokey jokes from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, METRO and comedy stages across the Twin Cities
• Helpful tips for making soup and/or being the best werewolf you can be
• An erotic letter to Popular Mechanics
• A story dictated by Brian’s hound Hurley
What didn’t Brian include?
• The outdated story he published in Seventeen when he was an artiste
• His controversial journalistic exposé about Ann Coulter’s snake-y vagina
• All those boring narrative poems he published in lit mags 1989-1999
• An author photo of any kind
100 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
5 people want to read
About the author
Brian Beatty
25 books24 followersI've published five poetry collections: Magpies and Crows (Ravenna Press, 2021), Borrowed Trouble, Dust and Stars: Miniatures (Cholla Needles Press, 2019 and 2018), Brazil, Indiana: A Folk Poem (Kelsay Books, 2017) and Coyotes I Couldn't See (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016). Hobo Radio, a spoken-word album of my poems featuring original music by Charlie Parr, was released by Corrector Records in early 2021.
My jokes, poems, reviews and short stories have appeared in numerous print and digital publications, including Alba, The American Journal of Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Appalachian Journal, The Bark, Black Bough Poetry (Wales), Conduit, Cowboy Jamboree, CutBank, Daily Drunk Magazine, Dark Mountain (England), 8 Poems, elimae, The Evergreen Review, Floyd County Moonshine, Forklift Ohio, The Freshwater Review, Glasgow Review of Books (Scotland), Gulf Coast, Hobart, Hoosier Noir, Hoot, Hummingbird, Kentucky Review, McSweeney's (online and print), Midwestern Gothic, The Missouri Review, The Moth (Ireland), museum of americana, Noir Nation, NOON, Not Deer Magazine, One Art, Phoebe, Poetry City USA, Prose Poem: An International Journal, Publishers Weekly, Quail Bell, The Quarterly, Rain Taxi, Rattle, The Raw Art Review, Sequestrum, Seventeen, Shotgun Honey, The Southern Review, Switchblade, Sycamore Review and Two Hawks Quarterly, among others.
My writing has also been featured in public art projects and on public radio.
I live in Carmel, Indiana.
My jokes, poems, reviews and short stories have appeared in numerous print and digital publications, including Alba, The American Journal of Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Appalachian Journal, The Bark, Black Bough Poetry (Wales), Conduit, Cowboy Jamboree, CutBank, Daily Drunk Magazine, Dark Mountain (England), 8 Poems, elimae, The Evergreen Review, Floyd County Moonshine, Forklift Ohio, The Freshwater Review, Glasgow Review of Books (Scotland), Gulf Coast, Hobart, Hoosier Noir, Hoot, Hummingbird, Kentucky Review, McSweeney's (online and print), Midwestern Gothic, The Missouri Review, The Moth (Ireland), museum of americana, Noir Nation, NOON, Not Deer Magazine, One Art, Phoebe, Poetry City USA, Prose Poem: An International Journal, Publishers Weekly, Quail Bell, The Quarterly, Rain Taxi, Rattle, The Raw Art Review, Sequestrum, Seventeen, Shotgun Honey, The Southern Review, Switchblade, Sycamore Review and Two Hawks Quarterly, among others.
My writing has also been featured in public art projects and on public radio.
I live in Carmel, Indiana.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 8, 2014
http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/8511786...
Brian Beatty is a friend of mine. He has the perfect voice for live readings and recordings of his poems, jokes, and anecdotes. He is multifaceted. Not too many days ago he sent me via his machine to my machine some MP3's he had recorded. I have to think they were multitrack recordings as he informed me that it was he who was playing all the instruments. These songs were intentionally crude attempts at a raw sound I crave. Something tells me I need Brian Beatty composing music for my next movie soundtrack, a film I haven't planned as yet but I am getting there. I am still compiling footage. My method is to fully saturate myself with all of the footage I have collected to where the many virtual reels sit collected in my files until it is I who gets antsy and decides to get serious again. That is when the fun begins. And the hard work. It is at this point specifically when I finally see where it is I am going after all this time hidden by my intuition and motoring through my instincts. Same method I use for writing critical reviews regarding books I might have read. Sometimes these books are never finished because the reading wasn't going anywhere for me. It is almost shocking to me how often this happens these days when taking a look at the "next best thing" in contemporary literature. The anti-establishment literary elite tout these books so heavily and to their growing numbers of acolytes and wannabes who in turn laud these same works and heap their praises not only on these newly discovered writers like themselves but the brilliant editors who "found" these gems and have given them their first chance at literary glory. In contrast I usually discover gifted writers who are already dead, who never got their rightful due back in the time it would have mattered to their lives and families most. The one instance when I did discover a true literary contemporary talent cost me dearly in violent threats and vulgarities on my person when the ungrateful author failed to acknowledge my smallest of requests for even the slightest notion of a thank you for my efforts in getting him known and connected to one of our greatest and influential editorial champions the New York City publishing world has ever known. On the other hand Beatty is a pretty big fellow himself, and unlike the aforementioned one he is also hairy so I will exercise my being ultra careful here and proceed with a certain and politely-distanced caution.
Brian Beatty's small book Duck! is listed under the library heading of humor. However, not all of it is funny. There is something lurking in the words he's placed and put to make you think. But I do miss and crave his reading of the text aloud, and it is necessary for me to make believe I am hearing him speak as I make my way through these hundred pages. Beatty definitely has talent, and a good last name. There is a story about his beard that I think is a doozy called The Bearded Gentleman. There are also stories about dogs and squirrels you can bet your life are interesting. There is even a correspondence included in this collection in which he writes Popular Mechanics a few words of complaint against their real-life anatomically-complete robotic-sex doll he purchased and how he wasn't getting, as one of my sons likes to say, "His full satisfaction".
One of my favorite subjects of study is suicide, which obviously is also on the mind of a funny man the likes of Brian Beatty. I myself, though sad at times, quite unhappy and discontented to periodic levels of extreme degrees, and wondering what my life is about and if anything about it really matters, am not suicidal, nor have I ever been. Only once did I contract the flu so bad that I literally thought I was dying and even wished myself so as I did not care to go on any longer in the terrible state I was suffering in. Luckily the flu passed and I am still here. But a true hater I am, and I have always considered myself more homicidal than suicidal, even though I have never killed anyone and I have never planned on offing anyone as yet. But, and because of these hard feelings, I do not carry a gun. And I quit packing my 32 in. autographed Al Kaline Louisville Slugger in the trunk of my car for fear I would eventually use it on somebody wishing to invade my space. But that was years ago when I had some anger issues I have since dealt with responsibly. Almost thirty years ago I quit drinking, my surrender then being the instrument of all these hateful feelings of mine rising to the surface, no longer dulled and successfully buried in my medicated state within my active alcohol addiction. Beatty has a poem in this book Duck! called Deathwish which pretty much sums up the bulk of the problem for me. I guess you could say this poem was my favorite of many I did like in this first collection. I confess that Beatty is more fun to listen to than read, but it's good to have his words close enough to where you might get to them if your spirits need a little rise, or in my case at times, a little bit less hell.
Brian Beatty is a friend of mine. He has the perfect voice for live readings and recordings of his poems, jokes, and anecdotes. He is multifaceted. Not too many days ago he sent me via his machine to my machine some MP3's he had recorded. I have to think they were multitrack recordings as he informed me that it was he who was playing all the instruments. These songs were intentionally crude attempts at a raw sound I crave. Something tells me I need Brian Beatty composing music for my next movie soundtrack, a film I haven't planned as yet but I am getting there. I am still compiling footage. My method is to fully saturate myself with all of the footage I have collected to where the many virtual reels sit collected in my files until it is I who gets antsy and decides to get serious again. That is when the fun begins. And the hard work. It is at this point specifically when I finally see where it is I am going after all this time hidden by my intuition and motoring through my instincts. Same method I use for writing critical reviews regarding books I might have read. Sometimes these books are never finished because the reading wasn't going anywhere for me. It is almost shocking to me how often this happens these days when taking a look at the "next best thing" in contemporary literature. The anti-establishment literary elite tout these books so heavily and to their growing numbers of acolytes and wannabes who in turn laud these same works and heap their praises not only on these newly discovered writers like themselves but the brilliant editors who "found" these gems and have given them their first chance at literary glory. In contrast I usually discover gifted writers who are already dead, who never got their rightful due back in the time it would have mattered to their lives and families most. The one instance when I did discover a true literary contemporary talent cost me dearly in violent threats and vulgarities on my person when the ungrateful author failed to acknowledge my smallest of requests for even the slightest notion of a thank you for my efforts in getting him known and connected to one of our greatest and influential editorial champions the New York City publishing world has ever known. On the other hand Beatty is a pretty big fellow himself, and unlike the aforementioned one he is also hairy so I will exercise my being ultra careful here and proceed with a certain and politely-distanced caution.
Brian Beatty's small book Duck! is listed under the library heading of humor. However, not all of it is funny. There is something lurking in the words he's placed and put to make you think. But I do miss and crave his reading of the text aloud, and it is necessary for me to make believe I am hearing him speak as I make my way through these hundred pages. Beatty definitely has talent, and a good last name. There is a story about his beard that I think is a doozy called The Bearded Gentleman. There are also stories about dogs and squirrels you can bet your life are interesting. There is even a correspondence included in this collection in which he writes Popular Mechanics a few words of complaint against their real-life anatomically-complete robotic-sex doll he purchased and how he wasn't getting, as one of my sons likes to say, "His full satisfaction".
One of my favorite subjects of study is suicide, which obviously is also on the mind of a funny man the likes of Brian Beatty. I myself, though sad at times, quite unhappy and discontented to periodic levels of extreme degrees, and wondering what my life is about and if anything about it really matters, am not suicidal, nor have I ever been. Only once did I contract the flu so bad that I literally thought I was dying and even wished myself so as I did not care to go on any longer in the terrible state I was suffering in. Luckily the flu passed and I am still here. But a true hater I am, and I have always considered myself more homicidal than suicidal, even though I have never killed anyone and I have never planned on offing anyone as yet. But, and because of these hard feelings, I do not carry a gun. And I quit packing my 32 in. autographed Al Kaline Louisville Slugger in the trunk of my car for fear I would eventually use it on somebody wishing to invade my space. But that was years ago when I had some anger issues I have since dealt with responsibly. Almost thirty years ago I quit drinking, my surrender then being the instrument of all these hateful feelings of mine rising to the surface, no longer dulled and successfully buried in my medicated state within my active alcohol addiction. Beatty has a poem in this book Duck! called Deathwish which pretty much sums up the bulk of the problem for me. I guess you could say this poem was my favorite of many I did like in this first collection. I confess that Beatty is more fun to listen to than read, but it's good to have his words close enough to where you might get to them if your spirits need a little rise, or in my case at times, a little bit less hell.
December 12, 2012
Duck! revels in the absurdity of daily life with a poignancy and wit that is all Brian's own.
While his sense of humor might confound and challenge the reader his insights are guaranteed make you think and laugh.
I've shared this book with many friends, some of whom I suspected would not like it, and so far everyone has asked me where they can get it.
It's that good.
I heartily recommend it.
While his sense of humor might confound and challenge the reader his insights are guaranteed make you think and laugh.
I've shared this book with many friends, some of whom I suspected would not like it, and so far everyone has asked me where they can get it.
It's that good.
I heartily recommend it.
January 2, 2013
A collection of thought provoking poems and humorous essays by my favorite author from Brazil, Indiana. Definitely worth the purchase price. You'll find yourself reading some selections over and over again.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews