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Prince of Grass
Prince of Grass is the debut poetry collection from Dan Wriggins, songwriter and frontman of the band Friendship. Loving and absurd, Wriggins’ poems are overflowing cauldrons of metaphor, always inviting, always in motion.
For fans of James Tate, C.D. Wright, David Berman, and pie for breakfast.
Dan Wriggins is a writer and musician from Maine. He records and tours solo and with the band Friendship. His debut poetry collection, Prince of Grass, is coming in July of 2024 from Dear Life Records. He lives in Philadelphia with his dog, Roy.
“Deft, deadpan, dystopian poems... shrink-wrapped surrealist novels. Wriggins has captured our dissociative moment's sense of overwhelm, its blitzkrieg of product placement and tech engulfment, its hailstorm of contradiction and paradox, its alienation and even its inverted longings and hopes ‘to have no faith and be proven wrong.’"
—Amy Gerstler
"Prince of Grass inhabits a teeming Boschian cosmos of vertiginous wit and spectacular detail. Among its unforgettable residents are a talking cruise ship named Carnival Ecstasy, ‘a painter of fine bogs,’ a gamerchair scarab, and ‘an unlisted ingredient in the shoplifted / three-cheese pizza with an ‘I Voted’ / sticker slapped on the box.’ ‘Is the fabric stretchy enough?’ asks one of this world’s spirits. Emphatically yes. The elastic intelligence of Wriggins’ debut weaves its own ingenious blend of humor, sorrow, moxie, and unearthly delights."
—Margaret Ross
“I once spent a few nights with Dan in a cabin that didn’t have running water or cell service. If I had read these poems before that weekend, I would have been scared. Just kidding. This collection is beautiful and confirms that Dan Wriggins is a weird guy.”
—Joe Pera
Cover photo by Oliver Wasow, “Amazon Research Center, 1988.” Cibachrome.
Cover design by Jon Samuels
For fans of James Tate, C.D. Wright, David Berman, and pie for breakfast.
Dan Wriggins is a writer and musician from Maine. He records and tours solo and with the band Friendship. His debut poetry collection, Prince of Grass, is coming in July of 2024 from Dear Life Records. He lives in Philadelphia with his dog, Roy.
“Deft, deadpan, dystopian poems... shrink-wrapped surrealist novels. Wriggins has captured our dissociative moment's sense of overwhelm, its blitzkrieg of product placement and tech engulfment, its hailstorm of contradiction and paradox, its alienation and even its inverted longings and hopes ‘to have no faith and be proven wrong.’"
—Amy Gerstler
"Prince of Grass inhabits a teeming Boschian cosmos of vertiginous wit and spectacular detail. Among its unforgettable residents are a talking cruise ship named Carnival Ecstasy, ‘a painter of fine bogs,’ a gamerchair scarab, and ‘an unlisted ingredient in the shoplifted / three-cheese pizza with an ‘I Voted’ / sticker slapped on the box.’ ‘Is the fabric stretchy enough?’ asks one of this world’s spirits. Emphatically yes. The elastic intelligence of Wriggins’ debut weaves its own ingenious blend of humor, sorrow, moxie, and unearthly delights."
—Margaret Ross
“I once spent a few nights with Dan in a cabin that didn’t have running water or cell service. If I had read these poems before that weekend, I would have been scared. Just kidding. This collection is beautiful and confirms that Dan Wriggins is a weird guy.”
—Joe Pera
Cover photo by Oliver Wasow, “Amazon Research Center, 1988.” Cibachrome.
Cover design by Jon Samuels
63 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 1, 2024
If you're a fan of David Berman or any post Ferlinghetti oddball Indie lyricists then this is for you. As far as contemporary underground poets go you don't get much better than this in the states and as is typical no one is reading him. FRIENDSHIP is a fine enough band but I always find the production on an album makes or breaks these types of singer songwriters and on the page you can get the full raw beauty of Wriggins' mind. Mostly free verse from my eyes but the sense of rhythm and pacing is quite easy to pick up while also not feeling sing songy or slam poetry. Read it over lunch and then tell me I'm wrong
October 6, 2025
cool when one of your favorite songwriters is also a fantastic poet.
favorite poems from this collection:
-Make Happy Any Man Alive
-Tying Your Shoe
-To Giulietta Masina
-Storage Unit
-Lazarus En Route To The Door
favorite poems from this collection:
-Make Happy Any Man Alive
-Tying Your Shoe
-To Giulietta Masina
-Storage Unit
-Lazarus En Route To The Door
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews