A Deep and Gorgeous Thirst

by Hosho McCreesh

In the footsteps of Charles Bukowski comes Hosho McCreesh's magnum opus of drunk poetry. Mammoth in size and scope, DrunkSkull books is pleased to release the audiobook version of A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst, a drunken, epic collection about death and love that is unlike any of McCreesh's previous work.

"Because writing and drinking go hand in hand, it may seem an impossible challenge for a poet to offer new perspective of this well-worn, symbiotic relationship. But Hosho McCreesh does, and in his brilliant collection A Deep and Gorgeous Thirst he uses subject matter that might feel old and tired in the hands of a less capable poet and turns out poem after poem as exciting and irresistible as the first flush of new desire." (Tony O’Neill, author of Black Neon and Sick City)

"A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst is a sweeping collection that is, on the surface, about booze and bars and drinking a lot, something the speakers in Hosho’s poems know something about. But what’s beneath the surface is what counts. The people in these sly, funny, often heartbreaking poems know that a bar is never just a bar, a drink is never just a drink. These are poems about being human, the heartbreak and joy and horror of all that. McCreesh - like Joseph Mitchell (see McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon), John Fante (Brotherhood of the Grape), and of course Charles Bukowski - knows that the truth comes up when illusions of control come down." (Lori Jakiela, Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker)

"A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst is a beautiful book about something we too often see portrayed as the source of all bad luck and trouble. It’s goddamn uplifting. Now, fuck it, I’m going to the bar and I’m bringing these poems with me and I’m letting them sing straight to my drunken heart." (William Boyle, City of Margins and A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself)

Genres: Poetry

Audible Audio

First published September 16, 2013

About the author

Hosho McCreesh is currently writing & painting in the unrivaled gypsum & caliche badlands of the American Southwest. His work has appeared widely in print, audio, & online.

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read in 2013 and was blown away.

Listened to the brand spankin' new audio version and dug the way it was pulled together. Brilliant drunken poetry that sings and sways, both on the page and in your ears.

[Tina La · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hosho McCreesh is an outlaw poet fighting against the tyranny of dirty corpses. He's been writing relentlessly for the past decade and change making a solid and respected name for himself in the unfortunately-hidden world of the small press. His work is known for offering a raw and gut-pounding perspective of this fight we call living; while still tenderly nurturing a delicate hope for us all. But this new book takes the hope and blasts it front and center. A DEEP AND GORGEOUS THIRST is a call to arms for us all to take life by its balls and make it our own... to wake up and start noticing that each experience offers an opportunity to make our own poetry. This new collection is a wild ride careening through Albuquerque and beyond into Japan, Scotland, the Swiss Alps and more. Alcohol is the vehicle through which these raucous stories are told but truly the celebrated Deep and Gorgeous Thirst is not only for the boozy kind. This is about a thirst for life, for opening wide and biting down hard and sucking out the marrow. This collection is about love and loss and joy and heartbreak and friendship and family. It's about drinking it all in and savoring every last drop. It's about honoring all our moments... the grand and epic to the quiet and small. Do yourself a favor and break the seal and take yourself a hero's pull of this amazing book... Are you feeling thirsty?

[John Grochalski · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow...and what a book. i'm a huge fan of bare bones/no metaphor type poetry, and Hosho McCreesh serves it up big time in this book. This collection is mammoth and there are no poem titles (but there is an index, but that shouldn't be a turn-off to anyone. A Deep and Gorgeous Thirst is about drinking. And about life. About friendship, futility, sadness, and at times there's a redemptive element at play. I've read/written plenty of poems that involve the ins and outs of drinking, but what McCreesh does differently..or perhaps better than some...is that the drinking never delves into that woeful doldrum. it's heroic. it's exuberant. It's angelic nights of debauchery that leave the regret off the page for the next day's hangover or hair of the dog. true, there are the bittersweet ones that pop up. But there'a a hopefulness that rises above...and that's rare when dealing with the type of subject matter McCreesh tackles. (am i making sense)? What this does is lift Hosho McCreesh a step or so above those who are writing in the same way/vein....also...the voice is absolutely original.

[Timea B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hosho McCreesh takes the reader by the hand and walks him through his gallery of memories. Each poem is a snapshot of life's metamorphosis, and all these apparently chaotic scenes are held together by a faithful companion, alcohol. Sometimes drinks open our eyes to a facet which eluded us before, sometimes they just soothe our soul. Through all the tragedy and despair, we tend to overlook the minute amusements and wonders of each passing day, however this book does not.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hosho McCreesh’s new sweeping poetry collection, A Deep and Gorgeous Thirst, is, on the surface, about booze and bars and drinking a lot, something the speakers in Hosho’s poems know something about. But what’s beneath the surface is what counts. The people in these sly, funny, often heartbreaking poems know that a bar is never just a bar, a drink is never just a drink. These are poems about being human, the heartbreak and joy and horror of all that. McCreesh -- like the great Joseph Mitchell (see McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon), John Fante (Brotherhood of the Grape), and of course Charles Bukowski – knows that the truth comes up when illusions of control come down. “And when the bottle’s / half gone, you say, “I / can’t do it man. / I’m not drinking / another drop of / that poison.” Which is a lot like a character in a Raymond Carver story saying, “My life is going to change. I feel it.” Just as it’s impossible for the speakers in McCreesh’s poems to put down that bottle, even if it means their lives, it’s impossible for readers to put down these poems. Highly recommended.

[Rebecca]

This is an incredible audio collection of Hosho's work!

[Scott Halperin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read and reread Deep & Gorgeous Thirst, and each time it feels new and amazing. It somehow covers the spread of happiness and destruction and love and loathing all somehow in a seemingly effortless read. I think part of the effortlessness is based in the fact that, each page follows some kind of loose timeline, but you're dropped into some kind of random situation every time, each one carrying a different tone/perspective. You're slowly let into a world of Hosho, which anyone who has truly lived can relate to. I love how He doesn't fuck around with titles, because there is no need. I've read all Hosho's other collections but this one is so different it's really inexplicable. Unabashed and Guts aflame are highly recommended too. One of my favorites in deep&gorgeous is definitely about stopping in for the coldest Budweiser ever poured in Wyoming. Another that comes to mind, is the poem, where Hosho's glad that we live in a world where brothers still stand up for each other as he busts through the staff doors at wendys and definitely the last poem in the book. The last poem leaves you after some kind of twisted journey of drunken madness in a vivid world with an ultimate sense of peace, some kind of conclusion that makes you feel like you've read a novel. And it's so overwhelming you can't help but smile with him, after all the adventures you've been through with him from highschool to adulthood, you feel he's found his place, and like the song goes, "there's nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile." I don't know what else to say, but I've pretty much read this book every other month through in a sitting or two, and it's still growing on me, I'm still finding more lines to love and more emotion in seemingly simplistic poetry/storytelling. Hosho you're killing it!

Oh and that indexing is amazing and hilarious, it's like some kind of tripped out map that you wouldn't expect to work, but is exactly on point.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a confession to make. I’ve never reviewed a book of poetry, let alone drunken poetry! I didn’t know what to expect when I “cracked the spine”. Well, the first poem left me chortling and I quickly read it aloud to my man, who shivered and made a face like he just tasted something sour (or maybe chugged a bottle of vinegar)! Each poem I began, I told myself that’d be the last one I’d read that night. And then, before I knew it, I was scrolling down to the next one! Hosho’s writing is hysterical, heart-wrenching, passionate, curt, boisterous, and all-in-all, something everyone who’s ever had a few drunken nights with their buddies can relate to! And while I’d love to quote a few passages, I feel that taken out of context, they wouldn’t mean as much, or come across as funny, or sorrowful, or enraged, or emotionally charged, as they are in the lines of the full poem. Oh, by the way, don’t expect these poems to rhyme or, for that matter, to read like a Dr. Seuss book. So, my advice, if you’re looking for something that’s not mainstream from someone who will publish something that will shock you at times, make you laugh, make you cry, make you rage, then check out A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst by Hosho McCreesh!

Fans of Boondock Saints (yes, I know this is a movie and my blog is about books, but this just FITS) will like this book.

[Adrian Manning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hosho McCreesh has surpassed himself here with this beautifully produced volume of fantastic poetry. You should read anything by him but if poems about drinking are your bag this is the book! To use some drink related analogies, he has created a cocktail of poems mixing sweet and sour flavours and chalking them all around. The poems are like drinking sessions themselves - some fun and light, some heavy and more serious. The feel you get is also mixed like hangovers - some pleasant and you think of the fun of the experience, the laughs, the smiles, the beauty of life. Some leave a heavier impact, the questioning, wondering and often downright disenchantment with what you are left with. Life comes in many flavours and so do these poems, but like life it's the experience that matters and none should be regretted or forgotten. McCreesh has created a collection to drink deep from anytime and anytime it will give you something to dwell on.

[Rosanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this collection of poetry. It’s like sitting and reminiscing about the past with an old friend. Though these poems share the theme of drinking, they’re more about the connections made with others through–or in spite of–booze. Some poems are laugh-out-loud funny; others are touching and heartfelt.

Interestingly, A Deep and Gorgeous Thirst employs the second-person perspective. This really throws you into the story, making you an active participant in the events that unfold—whether it’s “smell[ing] your ancestral home on the cool wind of some crazy astral plane” or “having the world you once knew . . . snuffed out in a brutal whiff,” you’re along for the ride. A crazy, wonderful ride of emotions and spirits.

See full review here: http://www.flavorfuljourneys.com/drun...

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hosho McCreesh is not out to turn the poetry world upside down. These are not intricate, "deep" poems with many hundred-dollar words (though I'm sure he can wield them when necessary). What they do well is celebrate life, with alcohol as an accessary - in some poems to a greater degree than others. I enjoyed more the poems that involved some melancholy, or at least some nod to the seeming futility of life, than the ones centered around wanton crazyness, but with over 300 pages of poems, Hosho covers about as much of the drunken spectrum as one could ask for.

[Lost Planet Airman · Rating 4 out of 5]

If my first love were modern poetry (or drinking), I could easily have given Mr. McCreesh's work a solid 5 stars. So I still _really_ liked it, in spite of the fact that I like my poetry to rhyme, and that I have a low-brow liking for limmericks over anything meaningful, and that I haven't drunk like the author in 25 years.

These are fun short poems, perhaps sketches, of the feelings and adventures and joy and traqedy of the human fondness for alcohol. Do not mix with prescription medication!

Thanks you, Mr. McCreesh, for a taste of the adventure I missed!

[Hosho · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote it.

[Nora Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally posted on Extaordinaryreads
Furiously fun dip into poetry. A stunning coffee-table addition to any library.

[Ben]

So deep. And so gorgeous.

[Hosho · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote it.
I read on it.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found myself smiling while listening to a lot of these poems. It reminded me of people, places, and times in my own life. Such a great collection!

[Juliette · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has been wonderful re-reading this fantastic book of drunk poetry while recording some of the poems for the upcoming audio book. These poems are sweet, funny, romantic, and heartbreaking-and all are about times and memoires when the poet was imbibing. I love Hosho's writing, art, and friendship.