Zero Summer

by Andrew Demcak

Demcak continues to blossom as a poet of note with ZERO SUMMER, his newest collection of pieces of imagination married to craftsmanship. These poems define lust, desire, onanism, finding and feeling and losing love affairs, childhood longings and memories - the sum of a sensual being. Demcak's range is from the lyrical ('Vincent V. in 1993') to the raw ('Venus in Furs'). He offers the rare opportunity to share the struggles of writing poetry, as in 'Automated Response to Mark Strand': '…the poem is a permission/given away,'- and delves into current events - tragedies, disease, social injustices, world events that seem planets away until he stirs them into spells for the reader. Imagery such as this, and the countless other examples begging to be quoted from these fifty seven poems, create such rich atmospheres of beauty and urgency, and thoughts without horizon, that they seem to be coming from countless fertile minds instead of just one. Andrew Demcak has the gift and we are all richer for it.” —Grady Harp "ZERO SUMMER's skinny, sticky, cock-swaggering poems take 'bloody comfort' in Andrew Demcak's lubricated, literary longing, the bourbon 'sweet / with unimagined grief,' the very words 'laboring / over / the soup-bones of literature.' This is a book that will get under your fingernails." —Randall Mann “Spiralling electrically around a theme of longing, Demcak's newest work moves outward in arcs—from the sensual self, in erotic and familial relationship with the other ("my skin listening // still no I can't kiss me!" )—to the writing and artistic self, the creative pursuit of spirit through form (God "an unflawed blackberry…rosettes of icing…the murdered and the living brightness")—to this spirit in the world and in other people ("O divine architect! / O quick-drying cement!"). His language is playful, charged, articulate and highly crafted—always with an introspective sense of humor and form. Full of music from Ellington to Schoenberg, full of heroes from Noah to Ginsberg, Demcak's poems are attuned to both absurdity and pathos, those extremes that lead the poet and the reader towards their "unimaginable" Zero Summer.” —Nina Lindsay

Genres: Poetry

84 pages, Paperback

First published February 7, 2009

About the author

Andrew Demčák is an award-winning, American poet and novelist, the author of six poetry collections and eight Young Adult novels. His books have been featured by The American Library Association, Verse Daily, The Lambda Literary Foundation, The Best American Poetry, Kirkus Reviews, and Poets & Writers. He was selected to be the keynote speaker for the California Library Association's annual conference to celebrate his contributions to LGBTQ+ Young Adult literature.
He has been a finalist for the prestigious Dorset Poetry Prize, the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, The Crazyhorse Poetry Award, and the Louise Bogan Award for Artistic Merit and Excellence in Poetry. He did win the Three Candles Press Open Book Award, selected by the phenomenal poet, Joan Larkin, for his first poetry collection, Catching Tigers in Red Weather (2007).

Reviews

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

ZERO SUMMER
Poems by Andrew Demcak

And a Stimulus from TS Eliot

Andrew Demcak continues to blossom as a poet of note with his newest collection of pieces of imagination married to craftsmanship. ZERO SUMMER is apparently inspired or derived from the thoughts by TS Eliot’s Phrases from ‘Little Gidding’, one of the portions of his FOUR QUARTETS. Demcak divides this body of work into three sections, each reflecting a phrase from the quoted Eliot about those fractured moments in time trapped by circumstances, negating completion.

Part 1 ‘Between melting and freezing’ contains some of the finest erotic poetry. In what is becoming a hallmark for this poet, these poems define lust, desire, onanism, finding and feeling and losing love affairs, childhood longings and memories - the sum of a sensual being. His range is from the lyrical (‘Vincent V. in 1993’) to the raw. In ‘Venus in Furs’ Demcak defines eroticism:
….in
the morning I bag his lunch
while we fuck
my spine flat on the ironing board

at
night
inside the moon’s Valium
he’ll feed
lipstick into my incubator
so my asshole
will match Italian shoes.’

Part 2 ‘…this is the springtime But not in time’s covenant’ offers Demcak the opportunity to share the struggles of writing poetry as in ‘Automated Response to Mark Strand’ :’…the poem is a permission/given away’, or in the stunning ‘Myself in Memoirs’:
‘I’m this close
knee to chest
perceptible
visited by angry philosophers

such news embarrasses me
when training
lions

or
American lap dogs

or
those boys awed by the rancor of
slept-in beds

however true to my journal:

Eros
Then a few sticky peach peelings
and moonlight
on a dreamed-of ceiling.

In Part 3 ‘…a bloom more sudden Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,…’ Demcak delves into current events - tragedies, disease, social injustices, world events that seem planets away until he stirs them into spells for the reader. And he closes the collection with a moment of breathtaking beauty in ‘Moment of the Yew Tree, Moment of the Rose’:
‘wisteria spent itself completely
your twin garlands
over the juice pitchers
the block party pissing its light
into the grass

young peonies
dandelions
frowning white
the summer night
behind ears

no mistaking the tulips
who wanted to kiss you
waiting beneath cautious stars

somewhere
a lover folded like laughter
in dogwood blossom
moonlight
mint and dirt

your heart
as sure-footed as rainwater’

Imagery such as this and the countless other examples begging to be quoted from these fifty seven poems create such rich atmospheres of beauty and urgency and thoughts without horizon that them seem to be coming from countless fertile minds instead of just one – influenced though that mind may be by TS Eliot! Andrew Demcak has the gift and we are the richer for it.

Grady Harp

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book, it lets language lead with frank and richly twisting images. Love the title too, wish I had thought of it myself....


Diana

[Kaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm biased, because I've believed the author's a genius since 1995. Hopefully the rest of the world will catch up with me soon.

[Natasha Dennerstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

These tight, little economical poems took the top of my head off! Every single one of them is sparse, powerful and breath-taking, seriously. I love the eroticism, the unflinching honesty, the lyricism. I am a poetry aficionado and was really impressed with this collection, having previously only been acquainted with Demcak's YA fiction. This is excellent poetry: expressive, well-crafted and delightfully compressed language. There is a unifying style here—unpunctuated, narrow and lower-case—that really ties this collection together. I can't say enough positive things about this book other than that it would make a great gift and I am thinking of purchasing another copy to give to a friend.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zero Summer is a brutally beautiful and honest collection of poems. Demcak’s verses have the feeling of wrought iron; they have a rarified quality. Always intelligent and provocative, the lingering after-effect of reading Zero Summer is that of a Cocteau denouement- a harrowing insight into the soul of the poet. Truly, Demcak is a poets’ poet. The darling of academia and the thinking populous alike, Demcak’s poetry has always been an IQ test; it is rarely appreciated by the uneducated or timid. His work has been favorably compared to Berryman, Plath, and Poe, and because of his virtuoso command of language, Demcak is considered by many to be the spiritual heir of Emily Dickinson.

[Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

After seeing a few recommendations, I gave this a read. Although the book felt quite technically accomplished, I tired quickly of the book's eroticism, as I tend to in many other cases (Baudelaire and Verlaine, for instance). I'm all for lust, myself, but I think it's to be used more sparingly. All this said, the book's certainly worth reading, and when that's the case for a free e-book, why on earth not read it?

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

the language is excellent, luscious even. I'm refraining from rating it, though. For now anyway.

*edit* I'm giving it three stars. While the writing was very good, the subject wasn't for me. If I had read two or three poems on the topic, I would probably have walked away wowed, but in this quantity it was more than I asked for.

[Mir · Rating 1 out of 5]

In a 78-page collection, it should not take 15 pages to get to the first poem. I only read the first four poems. They were pretentious, negative, and sex/genitalia obsessed. Very disappointing, given the greater degree of innovation and depth of thought demonstrated by Demcak in his previous publication, Catching Tigers in Red Weather.

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-crafted, tightly written poems.

[Clifton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pleasure to read, the poems in "Zero Summer" blister, bleed, and blaze with the brilliance of real poetry.