Pattern Exhaustion

by Nate Pritts

"The night after I first read "Pattern Exhaustion," I gave birth to a baby riddled with cancer in a dream. This can't be right, I said to the doctor, this baby is too new, there has been no time for a malignancy to grow. Ahhh, said the doctor. There's nothing new under the sun anymore. And there's no sun either.

...So you see, this is not a normal Nate Pritts book for frenetic exuberance. But its bleakness offers exactly the kind of catharsis I really, really need right now and maybe you do too." - Darcie Dennigan

"This is the kind of poetry that could keep someone from killing themselves. This is the real deal. Read it out loud from front to back in one sitting and maybe you'll remember yourself." - Nick Demske

46 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2014

About the author

Nate Pritts is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Post Human (2016) and Decoherence (2017). Publishers Weekly described his fifth book, Sweet Nothing (2011), as “both baroque and irreverent, banal and romantic, his poems […] arrive at a place of vulnerability and sincerity.” POETRY Magazine called his The Wonderfull Yeare (2009), “rich, vivid, intimate, & somewhat troubled” while The Rumpus called Big Bright Sun (2010) “a textual record of mistakes made and insights gleaned…[in] a voice that knows its part in self-destruction.”

Reviews

[david · Rating 5 out of 5]

a wonderful work of poetry. comparable somewhat to a male suit and tie guy rendition of Ariana Reines' Coeur de Lion. It grabbed control at the beginning and didn't let go.

[Sheila Squillante · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love how a Nate Pritts poem sneaks up on you. It's so damn quiet, like a whisper from the back of your consciousness, reminding of how you failed, what you lost, who you loved, why life is so hard, broken and beautiful. This book will stay with you like an obsessive thought.